Method for Managing Clipboard Memory Usage and Item Life-span (16-Dec-2009)

Method for Managing Clipboard Memory Usage and Item Life -span

Problem - When a user performs a non-file copy (Ctrl+C) operation, the copied content is stored in the system clipboard and users might not be aware of how much system memory the clipboard is consuming. To limit the impact of clipboard on system memory consumption, there is a limit to the number of items that are retained, however, there is no limit to impact on the system memory. When the maximum number of items is reached, the oldest item is removed (first-in, first-out). This might not be the best way to manage the clipboard as: it prevents users from controlling the clipboard contents, the same item can be duplicated in the clipboard, clipboard items can "live" forever, and there is no mechanism to check for item uniqueness or automatically "clean" the clipboard. Because items can "live" forever, memory consumption will remain high and the user might experience "insufficient memory" errors while running additional memory intensive applications.

Figure 1. System clipboard in the Microsoft Windows operating system allowing collection of up to 24 items

Solution Based on the above problems, a method is required to manage the memory consumption of the clipboard with relevance to the rest of the system. This method provides: threshold management, user policies, and two-way item swapping between memory and the file system. The method is designed to be automatic and proactive.

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    Provided here is a proactive means of managing system clipboard items, by altering the system clipboard operation and providing new functionality, resulting in relief of the above mentioned problems.

Add a timestamp to track when an item was added to the clipboard.

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Add a life-spa...