The conditions described in https://wiki.keyboardmaestro.com/condition/Clipboard are not cutting it for me.
I want KM to notify me if Clipboard33 is the same as some names clipboard Key.
Hi @Desalegn
You currently have the condition set to use is =, which is specifically for calculations. What happens if you set it to use just is?
You also said you want to compare the clipboard against another named clipboard, but you're currently comparing it to a variable named Key, not a named clipboard.
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@gglick has given you the fix, but you might want to review the update I just made to the KM Wiki: Clipboard Condition.
Hopefully this makes it more clear which comparison criteria to use.
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Thank you guys.
@Desalegn, If one of the above posts solves your problem/question as originally stated, please check the "Solved" checkbox (click for details) at the bottom of that post.
Otherwise, please post your remaining questions/issues about this problem.
If you have other questions, please start a new topic.
The way it solved my problem was the comparison criteria is accepts clipboard variables such as %pastclipboard%32%
Dear @JMichaelTX it would be nice if you can add a little note on the clipboard into the description of the comparison criteria because the current description "has text that exactly matches a specified string." doesn't make that clear. (or, am I misunderstanding the term "string" here? Does it include all types of strings, even if they are in variable forms?)
Pretty much anywhere in KM that you can enter a string, you can also enter a Text Token, which includes the PastClipboard token and Variable tokens.
This should have been made clear somewhere in the KM Getting Started material, although I can't say for sure. It should be in the Quick Start , but it is not. I will add it.
It is more clearly shown in the Set Variable to Text action:
Sometimes it is the little things, that seem obvious to experienced users, that can be an initial stumbling block in any programming language, and that includes Keyboard Maestro. We need to do a better job of documenting this stuff for new users.
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This is very true. My observation in the last couple of years is that most developers know little about pedagogy; and often assume some kind advanced user.
In their manuals they often make a leap to an advanced stuff too fast.
Even worse, some never bother to write a help file, a basic tutorial. I remember a heated argument from users to the developer of Tinderbox to write some basic guide file (help).
Unfortunately, for most of us, we had little or no experience with programming, the situation is very tiring. The best lesson on computers I had was an introductory course on MS Office--had it for 3 days--when I acquired my first computer in 2007.
But, I feel equally lucky to find great people like yourself on Internet forums to ask questions and find assistance.
I am very grateful for all the assistance you guys gave me in this forum. Thank you.
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Unfortunately there is a bit of a catch-22 with manuals. If you make them very detailed, they become very long, which is time consuming (aka expensive) to construct, but also time consuming to read and off-putting to users. And yet if you make them more concise, then it is quite easy to to confuse newcomers.
And then there is the different between the user manual and the reference.
Keyboard Maestro is very much designed to allow you to start simple and build up your knowledge and designed such that each feature adds to the other features, so as you learn new features your capabilities increase exponentially. Linear learning and exponential increase in capabilities is the intended design.
But inevitably there are hiccups with the learning process, and generally for each user they are different.
There are multiple different levels to try to assist in the process:
- The editor includes a tutorial and quick start to try to get you up to basic use quickly.
- The editor itself has a bunch of help built in.
- The user manual (on the wiki) tries to ensure you understand the basic operation of Keyboard Maestro
- And the wiki then acts as a reference for all the various vectors of Keyboard Maestro facilities (Macro Groups, Macros, Triggers, Actions, Conditions, Collections, Variables, Tokens, etc).
- And finally, the forum is an astounding resource to users at any level.
There simply is no doubt that the forum is by far the most flexible and useful of these, because by the time you cover the scope of an application like Keyboard Maestro, there is a huge amount of information (the wiki alone has over a million characters of information. That's roughly two paper back books worth of information to read. Almost no one is going to know it all, and even finding the right answer is going to be a challenge no matter how perfectly it is constructed. The forum on the other hand acts as a very intelligent search engine for this information, and then provides far more information on top of that - there is simply no way plain documentation in any form can compete with the quality of information provided on this forum.
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The multiplicity of the sources often considered helpful; but, in my experience, it is one of the sources of confusion. We often don't know where to look. A comprehensive, exhaustive documentation as Bookends manual sounds the most preferable approach. The forum to answer additional questions and feature requests and macros...
Personally, I am already getting macros I need, thanks to this forum. And, KM is not that scary application to start with the basic.