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I have to make changes to a graphing application. Part of these changes involves searching for a specific server in a dropdown menu that has over 900 entries. Firefox allows you to start typing in order to search for entries in a dropdown - but these entries are all very similar, they are hard to read, and I have to type at least 10 characters before they start differing.

Is there an application that will TYPE text that I copy? Ideally, I'd like to bind this command to a hotkey, so I could use, for example, ctrl+c to copy text, and then maybe F1 to make the system type it.

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Why can't you just paste? – Vervious Jul 12 '11 at 20:58
You can't paste to search a dropdown. You have to actually type. – Thomas Frank Jul 12 '11 at 21:02
Because he's not entering text anywhere – MaxMackie Jul 12 '11 at 21:03
Alright, I've figured out that AutoHotKey can type text - but how do you tell it to type what's been copied? – Thomas Frank Jul 12 '11 at 21:04
In several Linux's, the "clipboard" is an application which you can read from. Maybe that's a direction you could explore (for Windows I mean). – MaxMackie Jul 12 '11 at 21:10
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ArsClip will do this for you. You use Shift+Shift+Z (You can configure this) to bring up your clipboard. By default, holding F3 while you click on the clipping or hit the number key that corresponds to it will make it emulate a keyboard typing the text.

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Thanks for the suggestion! However, even ArsClip is too involved, as you have to actually click on the Window (if I understand it correctly) I ended up with this simple AHK script: $f::Send %clipboard% - the dollar sign is particularly important, as it prevents the system from triggering the hotkey if "f" is in the clipboard. I was able to merge this, along with some other autohotkey commands, with a large Sikuli script, and ended up completely automating a Cacti process :) – Thomas Frank Jul 13 '11 at 17:42
You don't have to click on the Window, when you bring it up you can hit the number on the keyboard that corresponds to the entry you want to paste. Your solution sounds like it's more suited to what you're doing, though. Good job! – Kalamane Jul 13 '11 at 17:51
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