When comparing Enso Portable vs HovText, the Slant community recommends Enso Portable for most people. In the question“What are the best power user tools for Windows?” Enso Portable is ranked 50th while HovText is ranked 51st. The most important reason people chose Enso Portable is:
GChristensen recently upgraded Enso to Python 3.7, a great improvement over the original v2.5. You can write custom Enso commands in Python through its new web interface (or your favorite editor once you know where to put the files.) There's even an install command to pip install any Python package you need from PyPI. The sky's the limit.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Extensible in Python
GChristensen recently upgraded Enso to Python 3.7, a great improvement over the original v2.5. You can write custom Enso commands in Python through its new web interface (or your favorite editor once you know where to put the files.) There's even an install command to pip install any Python package you need from PyPI. The sky's the limit.
Pro Optional quasimode
Letting go of CapsLock just feels faster than hitting enter (sometimes too fast: be sure to disable the reboot command before turning this on!) Even with quasimode enabled, you can make it modal for that command by tapping Alt.
Pro Easily teach the app to open specific apps and sites
There is a learning function to the app that allows the user to teach the app to open specific items by typing "learn as open" and then clicking on the item one wants it to learn to open.
Pro Can go to existing open windows
By using the "go" command users can switch to their already open windows making this a bit of a window navigator as well as a launcher.
Pro Trusted signed executable and open source
HovText has existed for 20 years and has always been open source.
Pro Remove formatting from text copied
Copying text from the internet or from Office applications most often will include styles and formatting when pasting, but HovText can remove all this formatting, so only the raw unformatted cleartext will be pasted - this is a life-saver :-)
Pro Keeps the most used clipboard entries at top
Most recent entries copied/pasted are available from a top-down principle.
Pro Trim whitespaces and empty new-lines on copied text
When marking text with the mouse, it often adds a whitespace at the beginning or the end of the text or there are some empty lines above or below that gets copied too, but HovText has an option to remove whitespaces at beginning and end - very useful.
Pro Intuitive, fast and modern UI for finding previous copied texts or images
When viewing the list of previous copied clipboards, then it is easy to find the relevant text or image you need.
Pro Fully user configurable
All hotkeys can be configured and all layout, style and screen display can be tweaked, so there is a chance you can have it setup as you want.
Pro Portable and no installation needed
Fast, light, no installation process and no registration needed - just "click and use".
Pro Save clipboards on computer
The clipboards can be saved to local computer, so it can be reused after a computer shutdown.
Cons
Con Comes with a reboot command
And a shutdown command too. Installing these is optional, and I recommend that you don't, especially if you use the quasimode. Unless you like losing your work.
Con No message log
According to Raskin's philosophy which inspired Enso, a pop up "dialog" is a bad design. The OK button is a useless input that interrupts your flow. Enso's pop up messages, therefore, are transparent and quickly fade away on their own (like Android Toast messages). Unfortunately, this also means you can easily miss them if you're not paying attention. Raskin's solution was to keep a message log you can refer back to, but Humanized never got around to implementing that for Enso.
Con Usage tends to be slowed by the caps lock
Function of the app relies on the caps lock key being pressed to enter commands, which can slow some people down by having to hold that key down when they are typing commands.