Copy & Paste

[Elizabeth H]

Hi,

I've been lurking around on this forum for about a month now, trying out various hacks and having a good deal of fun pimping my Kindle 3. So I thought it was about time I developed some ideas of my own and posted them. Copy and Paste functionality is something that I often wish the Kindle had so I decided to have an initial stab at putting something together this afternoon. It can no doubt be improved but I think it's usable enough to be worthwhile sharing what I have so far.

Installation
Copy and paste the texts below into a text editor and save them somewhere on the Kindle. In my examples I'll assume that you put them somewhere on the system path and chmoded the two shell scripts to make them executable (if necessary). (I have /mnt/us/system on my path and put my shell scripts in there.)

Usage
Copying and Pasting One Piece of Text at a Time
To copy a single piece of text:

Use the Kindle's highlighting feature to highlight the text that you wish to copy. The last highlight or bookmark created is the text in the "clipboard".

To append the contents of the "clipboard" onto a file (pre-existing or not) called foo.txt in the Kindle's documents directory type the following in a terminal window:

paste2doc.sh foo

To paste just the highlighted text without the citation information:

paste2doc.sh -o foo

To paste the contents of the "clipboard" into a KindleNote document called foo:

paste2doc.sh -n foo

Batch Copying and Pasting
To begin copying a batch of items at once, run:

startcopy.sh

and then highlight all the pieces of text that you want to copy.

To paste all of the items in the batch at once:

paste2doc.sh -m foo

or,

paste2doc.sh -n -m foo

Practical Usage
Set up launchpad commands for pasting into your favourite documents (todo list, shopping list, whatever).

Source Code
paste2doc.sh (Unix line endings):

#!/bin/sh

if [ "$1" == '-n' ] ; then
	PASTE_DIR=/mnt/us/developer/KindleNote/work
	shift
else
	PASTE_DIR=/mnt/us/documents
fi

if [ "$1" == '-m' ] ; then
	BEGIN_LINE=`grep -n <'/mnt/us/documents/My Clippings.txt' '^___BEGIN_COPY_AND_PASTE___' | tail -n 1 | cut -d: -f1`
	BEGIN_LINE=$((BEGIN_LINE+5))	
	shift
else
	BEGIN_LINE=`grep -n <'/mnt/us/documents/My Clippings.txt' '^==========' | tail -n 2 | head -n 1 | cut -d: -f1`
	BEGIN_LINE=$((BEGIN_LINE+1))
	if [ "$1" == '-o' ] ; then
		CITATION=no
		shift
	fi
fi

if [ "$1" == '-n' ] ; then
	PASTE_DIR=/mnt/us/developer/KindleNote/work
	shift
fi

if [ "$1" == '' ] ; then
	echo >&2 "Usage $0 [-n] [-m|-o] memoname"
	exit 1
fi

if [ "$PASTE_DIR" == '/mnt/us/documents' -a  ! -e "/mnt/us/documents/$1.txt" ] ; then
	REFRESH=yes
fi

if [ "$CITATION" == 'no' ] ; then
	BEGIN_LINE=$((BEGIN_LINE+3))
	tail '/mnt/us/documents/My Clippings.txt' -n +$BEGIN_LINE | grep -v '^==========' >>"$PASTE_DIR/$1.txt"
else
	tail '/mnt/us/documents/My Clippings.txt' -n +$BEGIN_LINE >>"$PASTE_DIR/$1.txt"
fi

if [ "$REFRESH" == 'yes' ] ; then
	dbus-send --system /default com.lab126.powerd.resuming int32:1
fi

startcopy.sh (Unix line endings):

#!/bin/sh

cat >>'/mnt/us/documents/My Clippings.txt' `dirname $0`/startcopy.txt

startcopy.txt (Windows line endings):

___BEGIN_COPY_AND_PASTE___
- Bookmark Loc. 1  | Added on Monday, November 19, 2007, 07:30 AM


==========

Possible Future Extensions - Ideas

• Add an option to handle pasting into HTML files (including formatting URLS as links).
• Implement an alternative method of pasting by simulating keypresses? (I want to be able to paste into the Kindle's browser.)
• Write a Java program to enable "copying" from the browser's bookmarks file?

[knc1]

• Eliminating spaces in file names.

[hippy dave]

welcome thanks for sharing!

[twobob]

Originally Posted by knc1

• Eliminating spaces in file names.

would be a good idea with the unix filesystem and all.

a real pain accessing files with spaces in, in the main. other than that. top banana Elizabeth

I personally Use Cntrl + C , Cntrl + v via vnc which works surprisingly in the main. Obviously that does not work for all cases : )

Appreciate you sharing your source.

[qlob]

Thanks! +3000 Karma for you!

[fratermus]

Originally Posted by twobob

a real pain accessing files with spaces in, in the main.

For onlookers: quoting the space-containing string or \backslash-escaping the space will allow users to interact with space-containing files and dirs. Some shells make this with filename completion.

[twobob]

yep. TAB is your friend.

[knc1]

Originally Posted by fratermus

For onlookers: quoting the space-containing string or \backslash-escaping the space will allow users to interact with space-containing files and dirs. Some shells make this with filename completion.

If the user (or the utility) is aware of the requirement.

Any character, except the one having a byte value representation of 0 (zero) may be used, but (mis-)using the input field separator characters (space, tab, new-line) is consider at the very least "bad form".

The (mis-)using of characters that are assigned a special purpose in any language, natural or other, in the place of the general purpose characters should only be done when no alternative is available.

[twobob]

spaces are bad. m'kay???

[knc1]

Originally Posted by twobob

spaces are bad. m'kay???

Fixed.

[twobob]

This took far too long to do... (I suck at unix image tools)

but I meant... enc...

(I'm particularly proud of the terrible text overlay, shameful!)

[qlob]

Hahaha I love it! (its better than anything I could ever do, i have no artistic talent.)

[fratermus]

Originally Posted by knc1

I...(mis-)using the input field separator characters (space, tab, new-line) is consider at the very least "bad form".

Completely agreed.