#+TITLE: Pasting the Org Clipboard #+AUTHOR: Howard X. Abrams #+DATE: 2020-09-15 A literate programming file of functions for formatting the clipboard. #+begin_src emacs-lisp :exports none ;;; org-clipboard --- Functions for formatting the clipboard. -*- lexical-binding: t; -*- ;; ;; © 2020-2022 Howard X. Abrams ;; Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. ;; See http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ ;; ;; Author: Howard X. Abrams ;; Maintainer: Howard X. Abrams ;; Created: September 15, 2020 ;; ;; This file is not part of GNU Emacs. ;; ;; *NB:* Do not edit this file. Instead, edit the original literate file at: ;; ~/other/hamacs/org-clipboard.org ;; And tangle the file to recreate this one. ;; ;;; Code: #+end_src * Introduction I would like to paste the formatted contents of the clipboard into an Org file /as org-formatted text/. * The Clipboard Functions to help convert content from the operating system's clipboard into org-mode-compatible text. Each operating system as a different way of working with the clipboard, so let's create an operating-system abstraction: #+begin_src emacs-lisp (defun ha-get-clipboard () "Returns a list where the first entry is the content type, either :html or :text, and the second is the clipboard contents." (if (ha-running-on-macos?) (ha-get-mac-clipboard) (ha-get-linux-clipboard))) #+end_src Let's define the clipboard for a Mac. The challenge here is that we need to binary unpack the data from a call to Applescript. #+begin_src emacs-lisp (defun ha-get-mac-clipboard () "Returns a list where the first entry is the content type, either :html or :text, and the second is the clipboard contents." (cl-destructuring-bind (exit-code contents) (shell-command-with-exit-code "osascript" "-e" "the clipboard as \"HTML\"") (if (= 0 exit-code) (list :html (ha-convert-applescript-to-html contents)) (list :text (shell-command-to-string "osascript -e 'the clipboard'"))))) (defun ha-convert-applescript-to-html (packed-contents) "Applescript's clipboard returns the contents in a packed array. Convert and return this encoding into a UTF-8 string." (cl-flet ((hex-pack-bytes (tuple) (string-to-number (apply 'string tuple) 16))) (let* ((data (-> packed-contents (substring 10 -2) ; strips off the =«data RTF= and =»\= bits (string-to-list))) (byte-seq (->> data (-partition 2) ; group each two hex characters into tuple (mapcar #'hex-pack-bytes)))) (decode-coding-string (mapconcat #'byte-to-string byte-seq "") 'utf-8)))) #+end_src And define the same interface for Linux. Keep in mind, we need the exit code from calling a process, so I am going to define/use a helper function (that really should go into the piper project). #+begin_src emacs-lisp (defun ha-get-linux-clipboard () "Return the clipbaard for a Unix-based system. See `ha-get-clipboard'." (cl-destructuring-bind (exit-code contents) (shell-command-with-exit-code "xclip" "-o" "-t" "text/html") (if (= 0 exit-code) (list :html contents) (list :text (shell-command-to-string "xclip -o"))))) (defun shell-command-with-exit-code (program &rest args) "Run PROGRAM with ARGS and return the exit code and output in a list." (with-temp-buffer (list (apply 'call-process program nil (current-buffer) nil args) (buffer-string)))) #+end_src * Converting from Slack We can assume that most non-HTML text could be Slack-like: #+begin_src emacs-lisp (defun ha-slack-to-markdown-buffer () "Odd function that converts Slack’s version of Markdown (where code is delimited with triple backticks) into a more formal four-space indent markdown style." (goto-char (point-min)) ;; Begin by converting all Carriage Returns to line feeds: (while (re-search-forward " " nil t) (replace-match " ")) (goto-char (point-min)) (while (re-search-forward "```" nil t) (replace-match " ") (let ((starting-bounds (point))) (if (re-search-forward "```[ \t]*" nil t) (let ((ending-bounds (point))) (replace-match " ") (goto-char starting-bounds) (while (< (point) ending-bounds) (next-line) (beginning-of-line) (insert " "))))))) #+end_src * Converting to Org Let's work top-down at this point with the interactive function that inserts the clipboard into the current buffer: #+begin_src emacs-lisp (defun ha-org-yank-clipboard () "Yanks (pastes) the contents of the Apple Mac clipboard in an org-mode-compatible format." (interactive) (insert (ha-org-clipboard))) #+end_src The heavy lifting, however is done by this function. Note that I will need another function to tidy up the output from =pandoc= that will be more to my liking. #+begin_src emacs-lisp (defun ha-org-clipboard () "Return the contents of the clipboard in org-mode format." (seq-let (type contents) (ha-get-clipboard) (with-temp-buffer (insert contents) (if (eq :html type) (shell-command-on-region (point-min) (point-max) "pandoc -f html -t org" t t) (ha-slack-to-markdown-buffer) (shell-command-on-region (point-min) (point-max) "pandoc -f markdown -t org" t t)) (ha-html-paste-touchup) (buffer-substring-no-properties (point-min) (point-max))))) (defun ha-html-paste-touchup () "Attempts to fix the org produced by `pandoc'' that seems to plague us." (interactive) (dolist (combo '((" (edited) " " ") ; Slack appends this phrase that is never needed (" " " ") ; Pandoc's fixed space needs to go ("\\\\\\\\$" "") ; Pandoc's fixed space needs to go ("\\[\\[https://slack-imgs\\.com/.*\\.png\\]\\]" "") ;; Emoticons associated with a user ("\\[\\[https://.*\\.slack\\.com/archives.*\\]\\[\\(.*\n.*\\)\\]\\]" "") ("\\[\\[https://app\.slack\.com/team.*\\]\\[\\(.*\\)\n\\(.*\\)\\]\\]" " - *\\1 \\2:* ") ("\\[\\[https://app\.slack\.com/team.*\\]\\[\\(.*\n.*\\)\\]\\]" " - *\\1:* ") ("^- \\(.*\\)\\n " "- \\1 ") ("^ *<<[0-9\.]+>>\n\n" ""))) ;; Slack includes these time things? (seq-let (search replace) combo (goto-char (point-min)) (while (re-search-forward search nil t) (replace-match replace))))) #+end_src * Keybinding to Paste into Org Files We just need to bind it to the /local/ mode key sequence: #+begin_src emacs-lisp (with-eval-after-load 'ha-org (ha-org-leader "y" 'ha-org-yank-clipboard)) #+end_src * Technical Artifacts :noexport: Let's provide a name so we can =require= this file: #+begin_src emacs-lisp (provide 'ha-org-clipboard) ;;; ha-org-clipboard.el ends here #+end_src #+DESCRIPTION: A literate programming version of functions for formatting the clipboard. #+PROPERTY: header-args:sh :tangle no #+PROPERTY: header-args:emacs-lisp :tangle yes #+PROPERTY: header-args :results none :eval no-export :comments no mkdirp yes #+OPTIONS: num:nil toc:nil todo:nil tasks:nil tags:nil date:nil #+OPTIONS: skip:nil author:nil email:nil creator:nil timestamp:nil #+INFOJS_OPT: view:nil toc:nil ltoc:t mouse:underline buttons:0 path:http://orgmode.org/org-info.js