Convert HTML clipboard content to RTF?

[emendelson]

This forum has many impressive routines that convert RTF to HTML, but I can't find anything that does the reverse conversion: converts HTML text in the clipboard to RTF. I know that this is only partly possible because there's no RTF equivalent of <span> or <h2>. But I'm trying to find a way to convert bold or italic (etc.) html text to RTF so that it be pasted into applications that don't preserve HTML attributes when you paste from the clipboard.

WordPerfect for Windows is an example of this. If you copy formatted text from a web page and paste in WPWin, you get plain text, not formatted text. If you paste the same text into MS Word or TextMaker, you get formatted text, which you can then copy and paste into WPWin as formatted text. I trying to figure out how to use AutoIt to do the conversion without opening up Word or TextMaker or LibreOffice, etc. (WordPad won't do the job.) Have I missed anything here?

[jchd]

This does even a LOT more: https://pandoc.org/

All you have to do if you don't want to run it from commandline everytime is to create a small AutoIt GUI to select files, options, and launch it.

Edited May 31, 2022 by jchd

[mLipok]

6 hours ago, emendelson said:

I trying to figure out how to use AutoIt to do the conversion without opening up Word or TextMaker or LibreOffice, etc.

Without opening.
But do you have LibreOffice Instaled ?

[emendelson]

4 hours ago, mLipok said:

Without opening.
But do you have LibreOffice Instaled ?

I should have said at the start that I am trying to create a utility that I can distribute online. I don't want it to require LibreOffice or anything else to be already installed on the user's system. But, of course, the utility can contain a copy of pandoc, and that may be the best route.

Again, what I am trying to create is a utility that will convert HTML text IN THE CLIPBOARD to RTF so that it can be pasted into an application that doesn't know how to paste HTML text. So the best method may be to write the clipboard to a file, use pandoc to convert it to an RTF file, open the RTF file, and copy the contents to the clipboard. If there's a more efficient method, I would be grateful to know it.

[jchd]

Write a small AutoIt program where you FileInstall() pandoc and run it with desired options; input is the clipboard, send it to pandoc stdin, grab stdout and paste that RTF result to the clipboard.

[emendelson]

@jchd - That is exactly what I needed to know. Thank you. Because I'm mostly a beginner at this (after fifteen years), I didn't think of using stdin and stdout - I was going to write and read files - but your method is far more efficient. Thank you again.

[jchd]

Note that pandoc requires UTF8 encoding. You'll have to experiment a bit to have all this done correctly but it should work nicely. If you hit issues with stdin or stdout, you can still use a temporary file.

[emendelson]

@jchd - Thank you again. Years ago I learned how to use AutoIt to convert between encodings, so I think I can manage that.

Meanwhile, I found this function for running a console program and getting stdout:

Does anyone know of a similar function that will feed stdin to the console application (pandoc) and then read stdout? I'm trying to avoid doing something incompetently when someone else has figured out how to do it  well.

[jchd]

Lookup Run options, StdinWrite, StdoutRead, StderrRead, StdioClose in help file. It seems StdInWrite converts text to ASCII, but given that you'll convert your html to UTF8 and that UTF8 is byte-encoded it should/could work. Else use a temp file.

[emendelson]

@jchd - I don't want you to waste time on this, but if you know a quick answer to this question, I'll be grateful.

In working on this problem, I can see from _ClipBoard_EnumFormats(0) that one of the formats is text/html and another is HTML format.

But when I look at _ClipBoard_GetData in the help file, I can't see how to get the HTML data. Is there an obvious solution that I'm not seeing?

[emendelson]

I see that the solution is here:

https://sites.google.com/site/ascend4ntscode/clipgethtml

And the first step goes like this:

#include <_ClipGetHTML.au3>
#include <FileConstants.au3>

$mydir = @TempDir & "\htm2ftf"
DirCreate($mydir)
FileInstall("D:\Dropbox\pandoc\pandoc.exe", $mydir & "\pandoc.exe")

$aHTMLData = _ClipGetHTML()
If @error = -1 Then
    If NOT @Compiled Then ConsoleWrite("No HTML data in clipboard" & @CRLF)
    Exit
EndIf
$inclip = BinaryToString($aHTMLData[0], 4)
If NOT @Compiled Then ConsoleWrite($inclip & @CRLF)
$infile = $mydir & "\infile.txt"
$openfile = FileOpen($infile, $FO_OVERWRITE + $FO_UTF8)
$f = FileWrite($openfile, $inclip)
FileClose($openfile)
Exit

From this it should be fairly easy to get everything working (unless I've already got things wrong...)

Edited May 31, 2022 by emendelson

[jchd]

I believe text/html if the MIME type and HTML regular html content, but I've zero experience with either.

Nice that you've got a working solution.

[emendelson]

I think you're right about the MIME type and content. Thank you again. Here's a script, with a lot of unnecessary commands that I'll try to sort out later on:

expandcollapse popup

#include <_ClipGetHTML.au3>
#include <FileConstants.au3>

$mydir = @TempDir & "\htm2ftf"
DirCreate($mydir)
FileInstall("D:\Dropbox\pandoc\pandoc.exe", $mydir & "\pandoc.exe")

FileDelete($mydir & "\infile.html") ; not needed
FileDelete($mydir & "\outfile.rtf") ; not needed

$aHTMLData = _ClipGetHTML()
If @error = -1 Then
    If Not @Compiled Then ConsoleWrite("No HTML data in clipboard" & @CRLF)
    Exit
EndIf

$inclip = BinaryToString($aHTMLData[0], 4)
If Not @Compiled Then ConsoleWrite($inclip & @CRLF)
$infile = $mydir & "\infile.html"
$openfile = FileOpen($infile, $FO_OVERWRITE + $FO_UTF8)
$f = FileWrite($openfile, $inclip)
FileClose($openfile)

FileChangeDir($mydir)
$a = RunWait("cmd /c pandoc.exe -s -f html -t rtf -o outfile.rtf infile.html", $mydir, @SW_HIDE)

PutRTF()

FileDelete($mydir & "\infile.html")
FileDelete($mydir & "\outfile.rtf")

Exit

Func PutRTF()
    Local $sRTF_FileFullPath = $mydir & '\outfile.rtf'
    Local $hFile = FileOpen($sRTF_FileFullPath)
    Local $sRTF_Content = FileRead($hFile)
    FileClose($hFile)
    Local $iClipboardFormat = _ClipBoard_RegisterFormat("Rich Text Format")
    Local $hMemory = _ClipBoard_SetData($sRTF_Content, $iClipboardFormat)
EndFunc   ;==>PutRTF

It turns out that the function at the end is something I'd used earlier but had completely forgotten. I was helped to write it it in this thread: