I'm tired of cutting and pasting, I just want to right-click insert|

June 27, 2006 12:48 AM

It's kinda like cut and paste in Word, but not really. I need to find a way to have embedded in the right click menu a hierarchy of pastable sentences. How do I do this? Or is there an app/addon that does this?

|
\
 \ 
  Candy
       \   
        Candy A
	  Candy B
        Candy C
        ...    \
		    Secret special agent A
		    Secret special agent B
		    ...
 \
  Vegetables
		\
		 \    


and so on.

I'm talking hundreds of pastable entries, not just a few so the autoformat thingie won't work for me.
sorry about the /< pre> being so big.

posted by the giant pill to Computers & Internet (6 answers total)

You could try a clipboard app like ArsClip (it has "permanent items" though I don't know if you can arrange them in a tree), or a hotkey program like AutoHotKey (you can make a custom menu though it requires a bit of scripting - unless someone on the forum has already written one. At least you'd be able to arrange it in whatever tree structure you liked).
posted by ajbw at 1:40 AM on June 27, 2006

Workplace Macro, EZ Macros, ActiveWords are all programs that can do this within any application. A sentence, paragraph, or book can be assigned to any quick 2-3 letter combination.

NoteTab (text) and Atlantis (text, RTF, DOC) have features to do this within their editors.

If you are envisioning a hierarchy to keep your clippings organized, then both of the last two apps mentioned will allow you to created multiple lists. Atlantis's list is even organized within folders, somewhat as you describe.
posted by megatherium at 4:45 AM on June 27, 2006

I wish I had an answer for you, but I think I can at least help others help you. You want to have a pop-up menu appear when you use the right mouse click (ctrl+click on mac) and that menu should have text that will insert into your document when you select it from that menu.

Am I envisioning this correctly? I know it can be done and I don't suspect it is too hard. I have recently downloaded a couple of such preformatted plug-ins for working with BBCode. Yours is just a different set of text "plug ins."

I think megatherium is on the right track. You can build menus using VBA in MS applications, but I think you might developer's tools (and skills).
posted by beelzbubba at 6:19 AM on June 27, 2006

i want this exact same thing, and would be happy if there was a firefox extension that did it. i want to right click anywhere in firefox, to get a pop-up menu of phrases i have added to the list, so i can choose one to copy into memory and then paste somewhere else. i'll look into ArsClip but if anyone knows a firefox extension like what i'm describing, please post a link.
posted by edlundart at 12:50 PM on June 27, 2006

The answer appears to rely on applying some macro goodness, as described here and here.

I don't have the time to figure out the specifics right now, but perhaps another VBA programmer can pick up the baton...
posted by i love cheese at 5:35 PM on June 27, 2006

CLCL matches this discription perfectly. Don't let the sparse webpage fool you.
posted by bigmusic at 11:39 PM on September 25, 2006