Sunday, 31. May 2009, 14:52:44
Another major breakthrough from me:I've enabled copying from Opera Mini on ALL mobile platforms!
As has been pointed out in all of my articles dedicated to the excellent, lightweight browser Opera Mini, in addition to the lack of italic characters, probably the biggest problem with it has always been the lack of support for copying text from a Web page.Now, this is fixed. While the way I've enabled copying is certainly inferior to the excellent copy capabilities of Teashark (see THIS), it's certainly working and, at last, enables anyone to copy anything out of any Web page, regardless of the platform you use. Yeah, it IS revolutionary.
How it works? Pretty easy: I've created a Web application that you need to pass the address (the URL) of the page you'd like to copy contents from. After entering (copying) the address, it presents you the contents of the page in a text area, which is already copy-enabled; that is, you can copy anything from them to your device's clipboard.
As mobile devices, in general, are only able to handle small(er) chunks of text in a text area, the dialog you're presented uses 2000-char-long chunks of text. You can easily switch between the block you're reading by just clicking the appropriate block link (0, 1, 2 etc.) There's also a way to force the application to display the entire page at once; note that, with pages over 10-15 kilochars, this may result in Opera Mini's slowing to crawl. That is, use it if you're absolutely sure your particular model / operating system lets for putting larger texts in an editable text area.
Now, let's see how this all works in practice.
1. add the Web page http://menneisyys.s156.eatj.com to your favorites in Opera Mini (the easiest way of doing this is reading this article in Opera Mini and clicking the link)
2. when you're on a(nother) page you'd like to copy something from, copy the address of the page you'd like to copy text from to the clipboard of your device. This needs to be done in the following way:
a. on Windows Mobile Pocket PC's (but not touchscreen-less Smartphones, where you need an additional app for copying):
a-1: press #1 (if your phone has a hardware dialpad) or go to Menu (left softkey) / Enter Address
a-2: If you haven’t disabled the new auto-completion address input field (the Auto-complete address input checkbox in Settings), press Down and go to Insert symbol… by pressing Up; and select it; you’ll be taken to the address input field of your Java environment. (You’re taken straight here if you disable the new, Opera Mini-specific address input field.)
a-3: select Menu (right softkey) / Current Address
a-4: As you can see, the address of the current page is displayed. Just copy it: highlight it entirely (under Jbed, to do this, click Shift, Ctrl and, finally, the left arrow on the on-screen keyboard) and press Ctrl-C on the virtual keyboard.
b. on Blackberry phones:
b-1: press #1 (if your phone has a hardware dialpad) or go to Menu / Enter Address
b-2: If you haven’t disabled the new auto-completion address input field (the Auto-complete address input checkbox in Settings), roll the trackball down, and, then, up, until you get to Insert symbol…. Now, you'll be taken to the address input field of your Java environment. (You’re taken straight here if you disable the new, Opera Mini-specific address input field.)
b-3: press the Shift button and roll the trackball down until the entire (current) address is selected
b-4: press Menu and select the (default) Copy.
b-5: to exit this dialog, press Back twice.
3. now that you've copied the address of the current page, switch to the previously (in bullet 1) stored page. When it loads, copy the URL of the previous page (the one you'd like to copy text from) to the "Enter the URL to convert" textfield. To do this, start editing the field and,
- on Blackberries, press the hardware Menu button and go down to Paste.
- on Windows Mobile devices, bring up the virtual keyboard and click Ctl, and, then, V
- on Symbian devices, long-press the Pen button until "Paste" is shown over the right softkey. Not releasing the Pen button, press the right softkey.
After some conversion, a new page is displayed, with a huge text area displaying the textual contents of the Web page. If the contents of the page is longer than 2000 characters, only the first 2000 is displayed (not to overburden the phone) and you can select the later ones by clicking 1, 2, ... n at the top of the page. You can also make the system display the entire content entirely, without cutting it in chunks, by clicking the "Click here to see the entire page!" link. Again, use this feature with caution - again, your phone may slow to a crawl, if the midlet manager's text area component is able to edit so huge blocks of text at all).
Finally, if you absolutely don't see anything and/or you'd like to see the entire markup of the page, click "Click this to switch to tag-enabled mode if you don't see anything".
After you've stepped into editing the text area displaying the (given chunk of) text, just look for the expression / URL etc. to copy to the clipboard. Once you've found it, highlight it and copy to the clipboard. This operation is supported on all the major smartphone operating systems and done in the same way as copying the address of the current page to the clipboard.
Hosting
Currently, the converter is hosted on a free JSP server that needs to be manually restarted every six hour (to force people to purchase a real Web package). That is, when you do check it out, it might not work at all. I will surely move it to another page / service provider if I don't find anyone else to voluntarily host it, depending on the price / conditions. (Currently, I don't really need a JSP/PHP-capable Webpage and, consequently, I've only subscribed to a static one for my database/picture/file back-end at http://www.winmobiletech.com/ ; this is why I can't currently host it myself.)
If you have the bandwidth and you'd like to help Opera Mini users, feel free to host the files yourself. If you have a JSP engine (Tomcat et al.), you'll find the web application (WAR) file HERE. If you only have a PHP or ASP engine, and don't want to struggle with porting the Java app into PHP or ASP, let me know and I convert it instead.
Source
The source of my converter is really-really small. The two, related files HERE and HERE, should you want to know how it works. The first is the main "landing" page you need to paste the URL to paste text from (it's a static HTML page as there is no need for any dynamic content in it); the second is the actual JSP page doing the work.
Sunday, 31. May 2009, 16:32:27
I currently use http://cousinisaac.com/mobitol/ for my copy and paste.
Sunday, 31. May 2009, 20:11:19
Originally posted by qlue:
I have php on my website. Could you provide me with a php version please. Thanks.
I currently use http://cousinisaac.com/mobitol/ for my copy and paste.
Great! Thanks! Will port it to PHP as soon as possible.
Sunday, 31. May 2009, 22:56:26
Tuesday, 2. June 2009, 15:02:59
Good work though.
Tuesday, 2. June 2009, 16:56:19
Might I suggest a partnership with some people here? That way you can get multiple versions of it ready for use on different servers.
Tuesday, 2. June 2009, 22:05:14
Originally posted by Furie:
There's been a solution for this for a while - http://my.opera.com/Furie/blog/2009/03/01/copy-paste
Good work though.
Wowz! I didn't know about that - did you dedicate a separate thread to it in the forum? I monitor the forum on a daily basis (albeit I was on vacation in the first half of March; then, I very rarely was able to visit the forum) and haven't seen anything related to your stuff. (And, frankly, I don't really follow the my.opera.com blog posts, except for, of course, the Opera Mini fan blog at http://my.opera.com/opera.mini/blog/ .
Nevertheless, do you plan to add partition support? Currently, WinMo and Blackberry devices (and, I bet, a lot of lower-end smartphones) aren't capable of displaying more than 1000-2000 chars in a text area. (Or, if they are able, they become just uselessly slow, as is the case with the Blackberry 8800).
If you do and your server has the necessary bandwidth and 24/7 availability, I don't need to look for hosts to host my server and/or further improve filtering out tags / JavaScript; that is, you can go on servicing the OpMini users.
(BTW, I've just restarted the server; it shoudl work in the next few hours. I'll soon release the PHP version - yet dunno when, I've been very-very busy.)
Tuesday, 2. June 2009, 23:54:43
Also free to provide me with commonly visited pages (CNN etc.) that you think I could provide a more sophisticated engine - for example, only displaying article text and not displaying other stuff.
All in all, feel free to (publicly! NOT IN PRIVATE MESSAGES, they will all be ignored!) ask me to provide new functionality and/or site-based custom processing.
Wednesday, 3. June 2009, 08:54:07
Originally posted by miyuru:
Like I said, a bookmarkletting code. So it could be used just as a browser function.
Thanks, I'll look into the problem.
Wednesday, 3. June 2009, 15:09:13
Originally posted by miyuru:
May be yeswap can convert this into a bookmarklet ?
( Similar to his already great list at o.yeswap.com )
Here's the bookmarklet: javascript:location.href='http://menneisyys.s156.eatj.com/om.jsp?q='+encodeURIComponent(location.href)+'&blocknr=0'
I've added the bookmarklet to http://o.yeswap.com to make it easy to add to Opera Mini. You can also use Opera Link to synchronize the bookmarklet to Opera Mini if you prefer.
Wednesday, 3. June 2009, 15:56:43
Originally posted by Yeswap:
I've added the bookmarklet to http://o.yeswap.com to make it easy to add to Opera Mini.
Never knew about those before
I surf a lot (a lot!) with OM..you just raised my usefulness of OM to whole new levels.
Thanks!
Wednesday, 3. June 2009, 22:48:16
Originally posted by miyuru:
Oops.. Does not work for me. Gives a server error. Is it from your end Menneisyys ?
Are you sure you've pasted the full URL, with the leading http://, into the textfield?
Wednesday, 3. June 2009, 23:09:53
Originally posted by selurus:
Just a suggesstion can you display all the blocks on the same page rather than having to reload different blocks.
Done; see http://menneisyys.s156.eatj.com/i2.html - feel free to provide me feedback on how much it has slowed down your handset.
Wednesday, 3. June 2009, 23:30:15
Originally posted by Menneisyys:
Originally posted by selurus:
Just a suggesstion can you display all the blocks on the same page rather than having to reload different blocks.
Done; see http://menneisyys.s156.eatj.com/i2.html - feel free to provide me feedback on how much it has slowed down your handset.
A lot better! Thanks!
Is it possible to fix the hebrew encoding?
(utf-8 and/or windows-1255)
Thursday, 4. June 2009, 04:51:19
Originally posted by Menneisyys:
Originally posted by selurus:
Just a suggesstion can you display all the blocks on the same page rather than having to reload different blocks.
Done; see http://menneisyys.s156.eatj.com/i2.html - feel free to provide me feedback on how much it has slowed down your handset.
Thanks
I haven't noticed any change in performance on my phone.
Thursday, 4. June 2009, 08:09:44
Originally posted by yitzy:
Originally posted by Menneisyys:
Originally posted by selurus:
Just a suggesstion can you display all the blocks on the same page rather than having to reload different blocks.
Done; see http://menneisyys.s156.eatj.com/i2.html - feel free to provide me feedback on how much it has slowed down your handset.
A lot better! Thanks!
Is it possible to fix the hebrew encoding?
(utf-8 and/or windows-1255)
I'll look into this problem too; hopefully today.
Thursday, 4. June 2009, 16:12:55 (edited)
Thursday, 4. June 2009, 22:20:46
Originally posted by Menneisyys:
Originally posted by yitzy:
Originally posted by Menneisyys:
Originally posted by selurus:
Just a suggesstion can you display all the blocks on the same page rather than having to reload different blocks.
Done; see http://menneisyys.s156.eatj.com/i2.html - feel free to provide me feedback on how much it has slowed down your handset.
A lot better! Thanks!
Is it possible to fix the hebrew encoding?
(utf-8 and/or windows-1255)
I'll look into this problem too; hopefully today.
As promised, I looked into the problem. Here's the working solution:
http://menneisyys.s156.eatj.com/i3.html
tested it with http://www.haaretz.co.il/hasite/spages/1090414.html (Hebrew) and http://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanit (Finnish; check out the letter "ž" in word gudžarati after "urdu, hindi, sanskrit ja").
NOTE: it's for UTF-8 source pages ONLY. Do not try to decode e.g. East-European languages using 8859-X with it.I plan to release a version compatible with these traditional, 8-bit encodings as well when I have the time so that charset setting becomes automatic.
Feedback and similar feature requests is welcome.
Thursday, 4. June 2009, 23:09:57
In the meantime, based on public feedback (see selurus' and yitzy's requests on Wednesday, 3. June 2009, 18:13:35 and 23:30:15, respectively, at http://my.opera.com/community/forums/topic.dml?id=277592&t=1244154046 ), I've added the following two front-end pages:
http://menneisyys.s156.eatj.com/i2.html : if you paste the source page URL to this page, you'll be presented by all blocks in order. This way, you'll see (based on the text already visible in the beginning of each textarea) right away in which block you need to look. selurus reported it caused no slowdown on his handset; your mileage, on other handset models / operating systems may vary. That is, if you don't need this kind of breakup and/or it causes too much slowdown and you're sure you can find a given part of the text faster using the traditional links, use the first version instead. (Feedback is welcome!)
http://menneisyys.s156.eatj.com/i3.html : this displays UTF-8 pages properly (most oriental languages like Chinese / Japanese; Hebrew etc.). I've tested it with http://www.haaretz.co.il/hasite/spages/1090414.html (Hebrew) and http://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanit (Finnish; check out the letter "ž" in word gudžarati after "urdu, hindi, sanskrit ja"). NOTE: it's for UTF-8 source pages ONLY. Do not try to decode e.g. East-European languages using 8859-X with it. I plan to release a version compatible with these traditional, 8-bit encodings as well when I have the time so that charset setting becomes automatic.
As you can see, these front-ends 1. offer an alternative view (displaying the content of the entire page in multiple text areas, keeping in mind the text area editing limits) and 2. allow for copying from UTF-8-encoded pages.
------------------------------------------
Also in the Opera Mini Community forum, there's a nice tip posted by Yeswap: use "bookmarklets" to speed up invoking the converter. To do this, do the following:
1. from Opera Mini, go to http://o.yeswap.com/
2. click Tools or scroll down to Tools
3. click Copy Page Text
4. (seemingly) the same page reloads; NOW bookmark it as a standard bookmark (Menu / Tools / Add Bookmark or #7 if you have hardware buttons). However, don't save the bookmark yet - just open it for editing!
5. remove "http://o.yeswap.com/?" from the URL so that it becomes javascript:location.href='http://menneisyys.s156.eatj.com/om.jsp?q='+encodeURIComponent(location.href)+'&blocknr=0'
6. now, you can already save the edited bookmark.
7. you can quickly invoke the new bookmark: when you're on a Web page you'd like to copy to the contents to an editable text area (so that you can, later, copy text from), just go to your bookmarks (Menu / Bookmarks or, if you have hardware keys, #2) and click the just-added "Copy Page Text" entry. You'll be immediately taken to the target page - that is, no manual URL pasting is necessary any more! As you can see, this has really made all this very simple.
Note that you can safely change "om.jsp" to either "om2.jsp" or "om3.jsp" in the URL you bookmark (so that it becomes javascript:location.href='http://menneisyys.s156.eatj.com/om2.jsp?q='+encodeURIComponent(location.href)+'&blocknr=0' and javascript:location.href='http://menneisyys.s156.eatj.com/om3.jsp?q='+encodeURIComponent(location.href)+'&blocknr=0', respectively), should you want to have a direct link to the two new, alternative pages (display all the pages and use UTF-8) I've just added.
Also note that, strictly, you don't have to go to http://o.yeswap.com/ to add the bookmarklets. You can do the same by adding a new bookmark with the above contents (e.g., javascript:location.href='http://menneisyys.s156.eatj.com/om2.jsp?q='+encodeURIComponent(location.href)+'&blocknr=0' ). Also, you can name your bookmark anything - not strictly Copy Page Text.
Thursday, 4. June 2009, 23:10:54
Originally posted by yitzy:
WOW! Thanks!
Hebrew works...
Now yeswap, can you pleasa update the bookmarklet code?
Thanks
You can also, manually do it - just change om.jsp to om3.jsp in the URL of the bookmark.
Friday, 5. June 2009, 08:50:53
Friday, 5. June 2009, 10:51:23
Originally posted by fatladysings:
Any chance this cool little web page could be tweaked to allow for the copy and paste of a pdf file? I tried plugging in a couple pdf url's and all i got was a little gibberish
Nice idea; I look into it ASAP.
Friday, 5. June 2009, 14:43:21
Originally posted by yitzy:
WOW! Thanks!
Hebrew works...
Now yeswap, can you pleasa update the bookmarklet code?
Thanks
I've updated http://o.yeswap.com with a bookmarklet for the latest version Menneisyys' converter (om3.jsp) with puts all the text on a single page and supports for utf8, 8859-2 and Windows 1250 encodings. The original bookmarklet is still there as well for any one who prefers the paginated results.
Saturday, 6. June 2009, 00:11:08
Originally posted by jackkoho:
This doens't cover all platforms. It doesn't not include PALM
OK, let's state it as "all popular, widely used platforms".
Saturday, 6. June 2009, 00:26:11
Originally posted by Menneisyys:
Originally posted by fatladysings:
Any chance this cool little web page could be tweaked to allow for the copy and paste of a pdf file? I tried plugging in a couple pdf url's and all i got was a little gibberish
Nice idea; I look into it ASAP.
I don't think I'll have any problems with implementing PDF-to-text functionality; there're loads of related libraries (e.g., http://java-source.net/open-source/pdf-libraries ). Just in the process of evaluating them. Hope I'll be able to come up with a solution this weekend.
Saturday, 6. June 2009, 23:00:29
Originally posted by Menneisyys:
Originally posted by Menneisyys:
Originally posted by fatladysings:
Any chance this cool little web page could be tweaked to allow for the copy and paste of a pdf file? I tried plugging in a couple pdf url's and all i got was a little gibberish
Nice idea; I look into it ASAP.
I don't think I'll have any problems with implementing PDF-to-text functionality; there're loads of related libraries (e.g., http://java-source.net/open-source/pdf-libraries ). Just in the process of evaluating them. Hope I'll be able to come up with a solution this weekend.
As promised, I've implemented PDF support.
After a lengthy and careful evaluation of the current Java libraries used for PDF parsing, I've decided to choose Adobe's own one.
To use it,
1. navigate to http://menneisyys.s156.eatj.com/pdf.html and paste the URL to the PDF there.
2. if someone else has some seconds ago checked translated the document, you'll be presented its textual contents, in the usual multiple text areas (see http://menneisyys.s156.eatj.com/i2.html ) right away.
3. if it's the first time in the last few seconds that the document has been converted, you'll be dispatched to Adobe's page. After some 10-20-30 seconds of waiting, the conversion is finished and you'll be shown the textual version of the page.
4. NOW, just press Back until you get back to http://menneisyys.s156.eatj.com/pdf.html . Press the Submit button again. Now that it was just some seconds ago that you made Adobe convert your document, you'll be presented it, already in the text areas.
It's a bit convoluted but "hiding" the Adobe interface and make it even easier would have taken me too much time / effort.
Hope you'll like it
Wednesday, 10. June 2009, 13:38:14
Originally posted by yitzy:
Can i please get the source for 'om3' so i can put it on my server?
Your server is always down...
Jsp is fine...
Thanks
Yitzy
Strange - it should work all the time.
Nevertheless, I've made om3.jsp available at http://winmobiletech.com/sekalaiset/om3.jsp
Wednesday, 10. June 2009, 13:39:19
feel free to tell me if you need additional functionality. I may be able to implement it at once.
Wednesday, 10. June 2009, 15:39:05
Originally posted by Menneisyys:
Originally posted by yitzy:
Can i please get the source for 'om3' so i can put it on my server?
Your server is always down...
Jsp is fine...
Thanks
Yitzy
Strange - it should work all the time.
Nevertheless, I've made om3.jsp available at http://winmobiletech.com/sekalaiset/om3.jsp
I get this err message:
HTTP Status 500 -
type Exception report
message
description The server encountered an internal error () that prevented it from fulfilling this request.
exception
org.apache.jasper.JasperException: ISO-8859-8-i
org.apache.jasper.servlet.JspServletWrapper.handleJspException(JspServletWrapper.java:476)
org.apache.jasper.servlet.JspServletWrapper.service(JspServletWrapper.java:377)
org.apache.jasper.servlet.JspServlet.serviceJspFile(JspServlet.java:315)
org.apache.jasper.servlet.JspServlet.service(JspServlet.java:265)
javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:803)
root cause
java.io.UnsupportedEncodingException: ISO-8859-8-i
sun.io.Converters.getConverterClass(Converters.java:218)
sun.io.Converters.newConverter(Converters.java:251)
sun.io.ByteToCharConverter.getConverter(ByteToCharConverter.java:68)
sun.nio.cs.StreamDecoder$ConverterSD.<init>(StreamDecoder.java:224)
sun.nio.cs.StreamDecoder$ConverterSD.<init>(StreamDecoder.java:210)
sun.nio.cs.StreamDecoder.forInputStreamReader(StreamDecoder.java:77)
java.io.InputStreamReader.<init>(InputStreamReader.java:83)
org.apache.jsp.om3_jsp._jspService(om3_jsp.java:64)
org.apache.jasper.runtime.HttpJspBase.service(HttpJspBase.java:98)
javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:803)
org.apache.jasper.servlet.JspServletWrapper.service(JspServletWrapper.java:328)
org.apache.jasper.servlet.JspServlet.serviceJspFile(JspServlet.java:315)
org.apache.jasper.servlet.JspServlet.service(JspServlet.java:265)
javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:803)
note The full stack trace of the root cause is available in the Apache Tomcat/5.5.23 logs.
Apache Tomcat/5.5.23
Wednesday, 10. June 2009, 22:35:51
Originally posted by yitzy:
Originally posted by Menneisyys:
Originally posted by yitzy:
Can i please get the source for 'om3' so i can put it on my server?
Your server is always down...
Jsp is fine...
Thanks
Yitzy
Strange - it should work all the time.
Nevertheless, I've made om3.jsp available at http://winmobiletech.com/sekalaiset/om3.jsp
I get this err message:
HTTP Status 500 -
type Exception report
Do you get that on your Web server? With the UTF-8-encoded http://www.haaretz.co.il/hasite/spages/1090414.html , mine works just great - are you sure you're passing it a REAL UTF-8 page, and not a 8-bit one?
Thursday, 11. June 2009, 02:56:57
Originally posted by Menneisyys:
Originally posted by Menneisyys:
Originally posted by Menneisyys:
Originally posted by fatladysings:
Any chance this cool little web page could be tweaked to allow for the copy and paste of a pdf file? I tried plugging in a couple pdf url's and all i got was a little gibberish
Nice idea; I look into it ASAP.
I don't think I'll have any problems with implementing PDF-to-text functionality; there're loads of related libraries (e.g., http://java-source.net/open-source/pdf-libraries ). Just in the process of evaluating them. Hope I'll be able to come up with a solution this weekend.
As promised, I've implemented PDF support.
After a lengthy and careful evaluation of the current Java libraries used for PDF parsing, I've decided to choose Adobe's own one.
To use it,
1. navigate to http://menneisyys.s156.eatj.com/pdf.html and paste the URL to the PDF there.
2. if someone else has some seconds ago checked translated the document, you'll be presented its textual contents, in the usual multiple text areas (see http://menneisyys.s156.eatj.com/i2.html ) right away.
3. if it's the first time in the last few seconds that the document has been converted, you'll be dispatched to Adobe's page. After some 10-20-30 seconds of waiting, the conversion is finished and you'll be shown the textual version of the page.
4. NOW, just press Back until you get back to http://menneisyys.s156.eatj.com/pdf.html . Press the Submit button again. Now that it was just some seconds ago that you made Adobe convert your document, you'll be presented it, already in the text areas.
It's a bit convoluted but "hiding" the Adobe interface and make it even easier would have taken me too much time / effort.
Hope you'll like it
"LIKE" doesn't quite express my feelings about this, i can't honestly say i'll be using on opera mini a whole lot, but it's nice to know that it's there and available whenever needed...not unlike a swimming pool in the summer
Friday, 12. June 2009, 11:14:39
feel free to tell me if you need additional functionality or you know of a page visited by many Opera Mini users where you'd welcome some special, site/page-specific handlig (e.g., only list the article text in the textarea, absolutely nothing else). I may be able to implement it at once.
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