bLisTeRinG Software

ClipDate v0.6

What use is it?

ClipDate is a convenient way to get formatted time & date.

Why?

I won't waste desk-space with a clock! And anyway I want my own handy, system-wide date and time formats.

How does it work?

ClipDate will display a small menu with various date and time formats.
Select one to copy it to the Windows Clipboard, then paste it into your document (or just read the current time off the tooltip). Put a shortcut to ClipDate.exe on the desktop, menu or toolbar for quick access.

Notes

Clipboard
Clipboard opens the Windows clipboard viewer so you can check what's copied there. The clipboard application can be specified in the initialization file:

ClipDate opens and looks for the clipboard viewer application specified in the "clipApplication" value, and if found, adds it to the ClipDate menu.

ClipDate closes,but first looks for the clipboard viewer window, and if found, closes it. The "clipAppWindowText" value contains text seen in the title-bar of the clipboard viewer window. For the Windows clipboard viewer, the title-bar text is "Clipboard Viewer".

Edit Settings
The configuration settings include ExitDelay, Date & Time formatting, and preferred clipboard viewer application (above). ClipDate uses an initialization file "ClipDate.ini" which lives in the same folder as ClipDate.exe (see the example below ).

KeepOpen and ExitDelay
Normally ClipDate closes after a few seconds. You have to paste the date/time into your document (or focus the window for autoPaste) before the time is up, because ClipDate restores any previous clipboard content, then closes.

KeepOpen will stop ClipDate from closing and will re-open the menu after you select an option. ClipDate will also place an icon in the Windows Tray. To access the ClipDate menu right-click the tray-icon; or double-click the icon to get the previously chosen format into the clipboard again.

ExitDelay is the time ClipDate should stay open after you choose a date/time selection. A tooltip will appear near the mouse-pointer and will stay on-screen for this time too. The default value is 7000 milliseconds (7 seconds). This is also the time until autoPaste is activated.

autoPaste After the ExitDelay, when autoPaste is on, ClipDate will paste into whichever window is on top.

Time and Date formatting
Select 'Edit Settings' from the ClipDate menu, then alter the value-pairs of "menuN" and "codeN". You can also create new entries following the same format.
ClipDate knows some 'words'. The 'words' and thier results are in this table:

a_yyyy	2006	a_yy	06	colon	:
a_dd	30	a_mm	08	space
a_ddd	Wed	a_mmm	Aug	comma	,
a_dddd	Wednesday	a_mmmm	August	hyphen	-

a_h	3	a_hh	03	a_HH	15
a_min	28	a_sec	59	a_tt	PM

ClipDate.ini

[menu]
menu1=&1) 30 Aug 2006
code1=a_dd space a_mmm space a_yyyy

menu2=&2) Wed, Aug 30, 2006
code2=a_ddd comma space a_mmm space a_dd comma space a_yyyy

menu3=&3) 2006-08-30
code3=a_yyyy hyphen a_mm hyphen a_dd 

menu4=&4) Wednesday, August 30, 2006
code4=a_dddd comma space a_mmmm space a_dd comma space a_yyyy

menu5=&5) 300806
code5=a_dd a_mm a_yy

[options]
autopaste=yes
clipApplication=C:\Windows\Clipbrd.exe
clipAppWindowText=Clipboard Viewer
debug=no
debugOptions=yes no
exitDelay=7000
help=ClipDate.html
keep=yes
hotkey=yes
repeatkey=^+v
repeatkey Modifiers= ^ is Ctrl;   + is Shift;   ! is Alt;   # is Win

Download ClipDate.zip (192kb)