Olduvai's MultiClip Pro is a replacement for the Mac’s Clipboard and Scrapbook; it’s so simple and so elegant that it makes you wonder why Apple hasn’t yet adopted it.
MultiClip Pro consists of an application, an extension, some auxiliary files, and a one-button installer that places everything in its proper location. The application must remain open for MultiClip Pro to function, while the extension lets you work directly in another application. MultiClip Pro comes with keyboard shortcuts (which you can change if they conflict with those of other programs) for copying or cutting material from your documents. The items are saved as separate editable windows, or ClipFrames, in a document window called a MultiClipboard.
You can paste items from a MultiClipboard at the insertion point in your document, but unlike with Apple’s Clipboard, you can copy item after item into the MultiClipboard — losing none of the items in the process — and paste them in sequence, one at a time, into your document. The program also gives you the option of pasting in reverse order. Or you can use a pop-up menu to select a specific item from a MultiClipboard to place in your document. ClipFrames can consist of graphics and text objects, including QuickTime movies and publish-and-subscribe edition files.
You don’t lose the contents of a MultiClipboard if you quit MultiClip Pro or restart your Mac (although you do have the option of clearing the MultiClipboard when quitting the application).
If you wish to store items, you can create collections of ClipFrames that are somewhat like Apple’s Scrapbook, except that you can open more than one collection at the same time and copy items between them. A rudimentary set of graphics- and text-editing tools let you make minor changes in your ClipFrames before you use them. A search tool lets you locate ClipFrames by text content or by title.
Some of MultiClip Pro’s capabilities are also found in Now Scrapbook, part of Now Utilities from Now Software. But MultiClip Pro’s keyboard shortcuts and ability to store more than one item in a single MultiClipboard provide a much more seamless transfer of data.
There isn’t much of a downside to all this convenience and flexibility. The MultiClip Pro application takes a little over 1MB of RAM, but if your Scrapbook collections contain huge files, you might have to give the program a bigger memory partition with the Finder’s Get Info command. Also, some programs use their own proprietary clipboards, meaning you may have difficulty copying material from them to a MultiClipboard. When I tried to copy objects from a PostScript drawing program (Adobe Illustrator), the objects were displayed with a PostScript logo and were uneditable in MultiClip Pro. The keyboard shortcuts are almost, but not quite, transparent; diere is a distinct pause, and just a flicker of your document windows when you copy or paste items to or from the MultiClipboard.
As I wrote this review, Olduvai had posted a public beta of MultiClip Pro 3.2, which adds support for System 7.5 features such as drag and drop. The beta, an updater application, is available to existing users direct from Olduvai or through its support areas on America Online, AppleLink, and CompuServe. If you are using a drag-and-drop-aware program such as WordPerfect 3.1, the update is a w'orthw'hile addition to an already fine program.
The Last Word
MultiClip Pro is what Apple’s Clipboard and Scrapbook should have been: an easy-to-use repository of data that moves between your documents without fuss or muss. Once you get used to this program you’ll find it hard to do without it.
Steinberg, Gene. (April 1995). MultiClip Pro 3.1. Macworld. (pgs. 67, 69)
Olduvai
Applications
out of 10 (0 vote)
5 / 
2020-09-15 / 
f7f0987383007dc061d216a59b456a09b80ca41b / 
/ 
multiclip_pro_v30.zip
Emulating this? It could probably run under: 
Basilisk II
