[Rd] Wishlist - access non-text from clipboard in Windows

[Gabor Grothendieck]

On 9/22/05, Duncan Murdoch <murdoch at stats.uwo.ca> wrote:
> On 9/22/2005 2:50 PM, Gabor Grothendieck wrote:
> > On 9/22/05, Duncan Murdoch <murdoch at stats.uwo.ca> wrote:
> >> On 9/22/2005 1:12 PM, Gabor Grothendieck wrote:
> >> > There is an open source clipboard extender CLCL that handles all
> >> > clipboard formats.  I think this code could be leveraged to simplify
> >> > it substantially.  Run CLCL and copy something from IE or Excel,
> >> > say, so that you have a complex object in the clipboard.
> >> > Now expand Clipboard in the left pane and the various components
> >> > in the clipboard are shown in the tree as children.  You can right click
> >> > and save any of them.
> >> >
> >> > If this code could be followed it might be simple to just have a new
> >> > argument to clipboard() which specified which component to return
> >> > or one could optionally return a list of all of them.
> >>
> >> We'd need to write clipboard() first.  This might be a good idea, but
> >> it's not at the top of my priority list.
> >
> > Sorry, its readClipboard() rather than clipboard().  See ?readClipboard
>
> I don't think I ever noticed that function.  It looks tricky to
> determine how much data is there.  For text it goes to the first NULL
> character, but what do you do for other formats?  Can you see how the
> package you mentioned does it?
>
> Duncan Murdoch
> >
> >>
> >> I think a better thing for R to do is to make sure it's easy for package
> >> writers to write connections.  Then a package writer could write
> >> clipboard(), and it would fit into the rest of the R machinery.
> >>
> >> Duncan Murdoch
> >>
> >> >
> >> > On 9/22/05, Duncan Murdoch <murdoch at stats.uwo.ca> wrote:
> >> >> On 9/22/2005 11:13 AM, Gabor Grothendieck wrote:
> >> >> > Just wanted to post this wishlist item.
> >> >> >
> >> >> > Currently one can read text from the Windows clipboard but the Windows
> >> >> > clipboard can hold all sorts of objects, not just text, and it can
> >> >> > hold them simultaneously.  For example, if one selects some cells in
> >> >> > Excel and then copies them to the clipboard, the clipboard will have
> >> >> > all the cell boundary information but R can only read the text and
> >> >> > will have to figure it out if it can.
> >> >> >
> >> >> > It would be nice if the user could use R to access all the information on
> >> >> > the clipboard, not just the text.
> >> >>
> >> >> This looks like something someone should write a package to do.  It
> >> >> needs lots of support (e.g. what do all the possible clipboard format
> >> >> constants mean, what binary format corresponds to each, etc.), but it
> >> >> would only be useful on the Windows platform.
> >> >>
> >> >> Duncan Murdoch

Look in clipboard.c in the source. It seems to use GetClipboardData.
See Microsoft's site:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/winui/winui/windowsuserinterface/dataexchange/clipboard/clipboardreference/clipboardfunctions/getclipboarddata.asp

or just google for GetClipboardData .  Its the first hit.