Good day self-hosters! I’m not exactly sure what to call what I’m looking for besides a “clipboard”. Let me describe my problem and what my ideal solution is.
At work, I get a lot of slack DMs that ask for the same information. It’s not consistent to the point I would just pin the information in my Windows 11 clipboard. But it’s often enough that I’d prefer to give people the same information each time it’s asked.
I’m limited in what I can build on my work computer. In an ideal world, I’d do what Gilfoyle did and make and bot but I lack the time and skills for such a task. Right now, I solve this with a very long notepad, which is subject to copy/paste errors. If I don’t highlight everything correctly or if I accidentally copy over an existing line. That kind of thing.
What I was thinking was a very simple website where the items I’m copying are in tiles that can be tagged and searched. Once I find what I’m looking for, I can click the button to copy it to my clipboard and then go on with my life.
Due to restrictions on my work computer, I cannot host containers or host a website, though a fully self-contained HTML page with javascript I could do… Ideally this is something that can be build using Github Pages build with Jekyll but so far, I haven’t found a theme that mimics the behavior I’m looking for and I lack the time (though not the skills) to build it.
I’d prefer the github route so that I can share the page with others on my team who get asked similar questions.
I am also able to deploy a website via Github Pages (with .nojekyll).
I have to think something similar to this already exists but I imagine the restrictions on having no backend might be the challenge. Love to hear your thoughts!
Edit: added context for Gilfoyle
Thank you all for the great suggestions. I should have added in this post that my work does not allow software with Copyleft (Don’t get me started. I’m a strong copyleft advocate and it annoys me that my company only takes and never gives back to OSS). I’m going to give TiddlyWiki out. License is friendly with my work, seems simple enough to run.
That said, Logseq seems to be pretty interesting as well. Might try this out on my on machine to see if I like it.
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just to give you the term to search for, these types of applications are called snippet managers. for example, https://snibox.github.io/
there’s a ton of them around. I don’t have a particular one that I recommend, since it’s not something I use in my workflow.
Ah…I never thought about it that way but you are right! Snibox wouldn’t work for my use case but a quick google search came up with a few possible ones.
Thank you!
TiddlyWiki might be a good option. Technically it’s a wiki, but it is a single HTML page with all functionality built in JavaScript, you could host it on GH pages, though you wouldn’t be able to use its save feature there (you would have to save to your local machine and the deploy a new version). It stores text in little (or large) cards which can be given a title, tags and other metadata, and it providesa full search system.
This comes the closest so far.
The saving feature might be the deal breaker, unless it can be done via a file (json, yaml, etc) that is committed along with the page. I’ll explore this more. Thanks for the suggestion
+1 for TiddlyWiki
I’ve been using it for years for a similar reason.
Each section (Tiddler) that you create in each wiki can be exported as a static HTML file, so if you have tables, etc, then formatting shouldn’t be lost.
I use Firefox with an addon that helps to save changes (not at the desk at the mo, so can’t check the name), but it works well.
It saves into the tiddlywiki HTML file. The default behaviour is to then trigger the browser to download the file. You can absolutely store it in a git repository.
At work, I get a lot of slack DMs that ask for the same information. It’s not consistent to the point I would just pin the information in my Windows 11 clipboard. But it’s often enough that I’d prefer to give people the same information each time it’s asked.
Use (something like) Auto Hot Key
We have a git repo full of markdown files, I made this template repo https://github.com/mhzawadi/doc-store-template from it
OP, I love how you just casually drop a fictional character’s name and assume we all know who Gilfoyle is.
I do, for sure, but it’s still funny.
If you don’t find a good app, check out Memos on github. It’s lightweight and could do what you need.
It may be overkill but I use Logseq for notes. It uses a local git repository to manage changes. I have a hook setup to push to a GitHub repo when it does.
It just produces markdown files so you can dig through them without the app installed if you like.
Logseq seems very interesting. It looks similar to “OneNote” in terms of overall approach but open source. The main issue my company would have is that the license is AGPL. My company refuses to use any license that includes Copyleft.
Just curious, what’s their reasoning?
Probably the notion that they’d be required to release proprietary code. I never heard a reason as to why we can’t use software with copyleft. Just that we can’t.
Ah, that’s the only thing I was thinking of, but it surely didn’t sound like you trying to develop a product on top of it haha
Can you install apps on your work machine?
I’ve used Ditto as a clipboard manager on Windows for going on 20 years. Unbeatable.
You can manage clips in it extensively, it’s scriptable, hot keys, groups, etc.
It’s also in the MS App Store
Edit: Just noticed you want something shareable, like a web page. Does your company not have a wiki?
Company has a wiki, but doesn’t have the feature of doing a tag-based search. It wouldn’t be much better than my notepad, though the benefit would be that it could copy html.
I can install apps but it has to clear cyber security.
Well that’s unfortunate.
Maybe Ditto will clear the security team. Hell, they might love it and be grateful to learn about it.
I’d think being in the MS store would help a little.
Try it on your personal machine, I can’t live without it, and everyone I’ve shown it to says “why isn’t this part of windows”?
I reviewed it and it looks like they use a proprietary license. Unless I missed something.
And MS Store doesn’t help. Each program that shows up on my work’s MS Store is approved.
As for trying it myself, I use Linux as my main workhorse. 😜
Copyq is now your friend.
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I’d just create a matrix room and invite everybody
Or a markdown document synced with nextcloud
I can’t host a matrix instance and would be overkill for what I’m trying to do.
Markdown isn’t any better than my current method of writing in a text file. I don’t need synchronization.
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Maybe this?
https://github.com/TagStudioDev/TagStudio?tab=readme-ov-file#installation
I haven’t used it, but it looks cool and maybe relevant
