The Text Collector

Have you ever scanned through a stack grabbing bits of information - URLs, quotations, people's names - and been frustrated by the need to keep copying, going to a holder field, pasting, returning to where you were, copying, pasting...? Then the Text Collector is for you.

The Text Collector palette implements an accumulative clipboard. What that means is that copying and cutting text with the Text Collector adds it to the previous contents, instead of replacing it. When you use the Paste button, all the text you've collected is pasted.

The Text Collector stack contains some rudimentary documentation and information about installing the palette. You can install Text Collector into any stack by copying the PLTE and PICT resources with any resource editor; the palette is totally self-contained. If you want to be able to open the palette from any stack, install it into your Home stack.

Once it's installed, open the palette by typing palette Collector into the message box. Since the palette itself contains all the scripts it needs, once it's open you can use it in any stack.

Scripters may also be interested in looking at the multi-line scripts used in this palette, as described in Secrets of the Palette Command. You'll need ResEdit (632K) and the PLTE resource template (1K) to view or change the scripts.

The Text Collector is freeware. You can download (22K) it now. (Included in the file is a black-and-white version of the PICT resource; you can copy this into your stack, instead of the grayscale PICT, if you use a black-and-white Mac.)

Jeanne A. E. DeVoto jaed@jaedworks.com