ansaurus

Question

getting HTML source or rich text from the X clipboard

Answer 1

+1 A:

In X11 you have to communicate with the selection owner, ask about supported formats, and then request data in the specific format. I think the easiest way to do this is using existing windowing toolkits. E,g. with Python and GTK:

#!/usr/bin/python

import glib, gtk

def test_clipboard():
    clipboard = gtk.Clipboard()
    targets = clipboard.wait_for_targets()
    print "Targets available:", ", ".join(map(str, targets))
    for target in targets:
        print "Trying '%s'..." % str(target)
        contents = clipboard.wait_for_contents(target)
        if contents:
            print contents.data

def main():
    mainloop = glib.MainLoop()
    def cb():
        test_clipboard()
        mainloop.quit()
    glib.idle_add(cb)
    mainloop.run()

if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()

Output will look like this:

$ ./clipboard.py 
Targets available: TIMESTAMP, TARGETS, MULTIPLE, text/html, text/_moz_htmlcontext, text/_moz_htmlinfo, UTF8_STRING, COMPOUND_TEXT, TEXT, STRING, text/x-moz-url-priv
...
Trying 'text/html'...
I asked <a href="http://superuser.com/questions/144185/getting-html-source-or-rich-text-from-the-x-clipboard"&gt;the same question on superuser.com</a>, because I was hoping there was a utility to do this, but I didn't get any informative responses.
Trying 'text/_moz_htmlcontext'...
<html><body class="question-page"><div class="container"><div id="content"><div id="mainbar"><div id="question"><table><tbody><tr><td class="postcell"><div><div class="post-text"><p></p></div></div></td></tr></tbody></table></div></div></div></div></body></html>
...
Trying 'STRING'...
I asked the same question on superuser.com, because I was hoping there was a utility to do this, but I didn't get any informative responses.
Trying 'text/x-moz-url-priv'...
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3261379/getting-html-source-or-rich-text-from-the-x-clipboard

rkhayrov 2010-07-16 09:48:23

Works well, thanks a bunch! I rolled this functionality into a primordial command-line interface: http://github.com/intuited/clipcli .................................. Any tips on how to parse the TIMESTAMP target? It doesn't seem to be a UNIX timestamp. Presumably there's info in the GTK documentation; I only took time for a cursory search for it.

intuited 2010-07-17 04:49:55

TIMESTAMP type as defined by X11 protocol has nothing to do with seconds since Epoch. This is 32-bit unsigned integer containing time in milliseconds, typically since the X server startup. I don't think it has any direct use for an end-user application.

rkhayrov 2010-07-17 09:45:23

ansaurus

tags:

views:

answers:

getting HTML source or rich text from the X clipboard

related questions