Copying HTML on the clipboard

Interesting Finds: January 21, 2007

Jason Haley — Sun, 21 Jan 2007 18:20:52 GMT

re: Copying HTML on the clipboard

onovotny — Sun, 21 Jan 2007 18:31:27 GMT

You might want to also take a look at the CopySourceAsHtml add-in for VS:

http://www.jtleigh.com/people/colin/software/CopySourceAsHtml/

Among other features, it can let you include line-numbers and use a different font/size than the one you use for editing.

re: Copying HTML on the clipboard

Craig — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 20:45:04 GMT

Tried your code exactly and it doesn't work :( Using XP, C# 2.0. Bummer. I've been trying to copy to HTML to the clipboard all morning. I may have to throw in the towel and get rid of that functionality. Nice code though, wished it worked.

re: Copying HTML on the clipboard

jmstall — Sat, 10 Mar 2007 00:50:36 GMT

Craig - where breaks? Does it just not paste? What application are you pasting into? Does it at least paste accurately into Word or Front-page?

re: Copying HTML on the clipboard

Jeff Winchell — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 18:02:02 GMT

You are correct about "Since the header spec wasn't very precise."

I read a header I manually put into the clipboard (by typing Ctrl-C in a browser window). I was able to replicate this HTML using the SetClipboard WinAPI function with considerable work. Then I started removing things to see when it broke.

Example:

If I didn't put a line break between the last </Body> and </HTML> end tags, it didn't work. If I didn't put a line break right before "StartFragment" and also right before "EndFragment" (I mean the instances of those strings in the first 50 or so characters). Also, I didn't test how exact it wanted line break... I used ASCII 13 and 10 for my line breaks.

This was true for my WinXP Pro SP2 machine (using MSFT Dynamix AX as the front end to the WinAPI code... I'll try C# shortly)

There may be other caveats I haven't run into.

In general though, this task was a huge PITA.

I also can't believe MSFT thinks HTML is a custom format.

3 years!

Mike Stall's .NET Debugging Blog — Sat, 06 Oct 2007 09:52:06 GMT

I just noticed that my blog had birthday #3 (Sep 30th) . In tradition, some various stats... 384 posts.