#27 Clipboard toggle button and hotkey

[Dan]

A feature to quickly enable and disable clipboard transfer would be nice. Multiple running instances will collide and stop the clipboard feature altogether.
Perhaps a toggle button in the toolbar, a hot key sequence, or an option to disable clipboard transfer if turbovnc loses focus?
Just throwing it out there...

[DRC]

Which viewer are you using? This is an easy feature to implement, but I could have sworn that the toolbar already had a button that did this. Also, I would really like to figure out why the instances are interfering, because that shouldn't be happening.

Also, please consider using GitHub to post requests like this. Most of our community is there these days, and I use SF mainly for file releases and mailing lists.

[Dan]

I'm using TurboVNC Viewer v2.0.91 (20160315). I didn't see a button for it, except in options/connections/restrictions.

I think I might be stuck in TVNC2-land with my comment about clipboards interfering, so I'll research it more and correct myself.

My apologies for not using github - I didn't see a specific section for feature requests there, bit I will look again.

[DRC]

No problem. I still respond to issues on here, but the SF interface is a lot more difficult to deal with, particularly on mobile platforms. For some reason, it interferes with autocorrect and the shift key on my iPhone, which makes typing responses very tedious. On GitHub, you just file an issue for everything, and you can tag the issue with "feature request".

[Dan]

Ahhhh, I see. It never occurred to me that these feature requests were "issues"... It makes sense now.
Would you like me to repost over there?

[DRC]

Let's keep them here for now while I'm evaluating. If I decide to take any of them on as long-term projects, we can move them over. On most of these, I need a better understanding of the workflow that necessitates the feature, because your workflow seems to be non-standard. But also, I'll implement anything that someone is willing to pay for.

[Dan]

Okie Dokie, the least important one is the floating toolbar. What kind of donation would get the other 3 into the program?

[DRC]

Just messaged you with an estimate.

[DRC]

Per our offline conversation, I'm willing to implement a hotkey for this for free. Any additional work, including integrating this into the toolbar, will require sponsorship of my labor and/or a code contribution.

Please let me know ASAP whether your research indicates that this feature is necessary.

[Dan]

Ok, I have concluded that my issue with the clipboard is this:
When I'm monitoring somebody, but doing something else (notepad, email, etc.), our clipboards are still synced, and when the remote user copies something, it appears on my clipboard, and vice versa. So yes, indeed, a hotkey would be most appreciated.

[DRC]

Does this still happen if you're in view-only mode? I think that perhaps a cleaner way to address this would be to stop syncing the clipboard in view-only mode, and I thought the viewer already did that. If it doesn't, then I think it should.

[Dan]

Yes, the clipboards still sync in view-only mode.
The flags are independent of one-another in the setup screen, ie. enbling the view-only flag doesn't disable the clipboard flag.
Perhaps something to address at if you plan to disable clipboard syncing when view-only is enabled.
Personally, I prefer them to be independent, as sometimes I pass (or receive) information via the clipboard to a view-only session, but it won't be a bother if you decide to change it.

EDIT:
By the way, if I have 2 sessions opened, One session's clipboard transfers all the way to the other session's. Ie. if I open a session to Michael, and then open a session to Carol, everything Michael copies to his clipboard goes to both my and Carol's clipboard.

Thanks,
Dan

[DRC]

Yes, that's also expected, because clipboard synchronization occurs in both directions. When the remote clipboard changes in Session 1, the change is synchronized to your local TurboVNC Viewer instance, which changes the clipboard on your machine, then the other TurboVNC Viewer instance detects the change and synchronizes it to the remote clipboard in Session 2. Bear in mind that TurboVNC was designed for running high-performance 3D and video applications remotely, not for monitoring multiple users, so your workflow is very non-standard. In most use cases, this behavior is desirable, because the users want to be able to seamlessly copy/paste between their local desktop and the remote desktop.

The Java viewer has two settings, one for disabling inbound clipboard synchronization and the other for disabling outbound. The Windows viewer, for historical reasons, only has one setting for disabling all clipboard transfers.

I'll go ahead and implement this as a separate hotkey (CTRL-ALT-SHIFT-C.)

[DRC]

A hotkey and corresponding system menu option for toggling clipboard transfer has been implemented in the "dev" branch under GitHub. Any additional work, including integrating this into the toolbar, will require sponsorship of my labor and/or a code contribution.

Closing this tracker item as implemented. If the hotkey proves insufficient and you still want this integrated into the toolbar, then please file it as an issue on GitHub (or as a Pull Request if you decide to develop it yourself.)