Author Topic: copying to clipboard - intermittent error  (Read 15768 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Al

  • Newbie
  • *
  • Posts: 4
copying to clipboard - intermittent error
« on: July 12, 2011, 05:59:53 AM »
Hi
Using PDFExplorer to copy information from PDF to PDFExplorer database. Author title etc from papers.
Using PDFView to view PDF and Quick info fields edit to paste the selected text.
When select the title for instance and copy (controlC) the Quick paste dialog comes up. But often there is an Acrobat error message "Adobe Acrobat - There was an error while copying to the clipboard. An internal error occurred". If I close this dialog everything works as expected, though now and again I cannot copy again. there error does not occur if I copy the same thing in the standalone acrobat. All the shortcuts etc are default values. Any ideas?
because it does not happen all the time it is hard to pin down. have wondered if it is one of the selected characters.

Acrobat 10 professional
windows vista and 7
Latest PDFExplorer patch

Just a nuisance rather than a problem. many thanks Alastair

RTT

  • Administrator
  • *****
  • Posts: 907
Re: copying to clipboard - intermittent error
« Reply #1 on: July 13, 2011, 12:31:20 AM »
Hi Alastair,
Indeed I also noticed this problem around here. Googling for this error shows many people with the same problem, but not related to PDFE, so for sure it is an Acrobat bug.
None of the posted solutions seems to work, so today, now that you mention it, I took some time to investigate it.

Acrobat write to the clipboard more than one data format, when text is copied. Plain ANSI text, plain Unicode text, rich text, etc..
What seems to be happening is that for each data format written, Acrobat, wrongly, opens and close the access to the Clipboard. When a Clipboard monitor is installed (used to detect Clipboard changes), as it happens when PDFE is in QuickInfoEdit mode, the monitor is fired immediately after the first Clipboard close. If the application associated with the monitor opens the Clipboard to access the data, Acrobat will fail to write the other formats, because the Clipboard access is already taken. When this happen, Acrobat shows that error message. This is race condition, so it wont occur all the time.
Can be something else, but this seems to be a valid hypothesis, because every time this error shows, the Clipboard don't present all the formats Acrobat usually provide.

To circumvent this, I've now introduced a delay between the detected Clipboard change, and the access to the data itself. Seems to be working. ;)
This change will go out with the next version, or patch release. Don't know yet when this will happen.

Meanwhile, you can select, and drag, the text to the metadata field, instead of copying it. Don't provide the same functionality, but it is even possible to insert, instead of replace, the text in an already filled field.
Or you can use another reader. The Foxit PDF Reader, or Tracker Xchange Viewer, are some good examples.

Thanks for remind me of this :D

Al

  • Newbie
  • *
  • Posts: 4
Re: copying to clipboard - intermittent error
« Reply #2 on: July 13, 2011, 08:02:09 PM »
Many thanks for the explanation - Alastair