multiclip - Copy text to clipboard with highlighting

This is my fork of highlight2clipboard that works with delay rendering and completely override Emacs system clipboard.

Author: Anders Lindgren
Version: 0.5

Support for copying text with formatting information, like color, to the system clipboard. Concretely, this allows you to paste syntax highlighted source code into word processors and mail editors. Also, this package acts as clipboard provider, completely short-circut Emacs's system clipboard call.

Demo

Installation

Since this is a fork, the recommended method is to using Quelpa.

A simple configuration that also make it works cross machine between WSL2 and Windows.

(use-package multiclip
  :quelpa (multiclip
           :fetcher github
           :repo "kiennq/highlight2clipboard"
           :files (:defaults "bin"))
  :diminish
  :config
  (cond
   ;; WSL2 is different machine, so we have to get the host ipaddress for it.
   ((executable-find "wslpath")
    (setq multiclip-host
          (substring (shell-command-to-string "ip r l default | cut -d\\  -f3")
                     0 -1))))
  (multiclip-mode +1))

Usage:

• M-x multiclip-copy-region-to-clipboard RET -- Copy the region, with formatting, to the clipboard.
• M-x multiclip-copy-buffer-to-clipboard RET -- Copy the buffer, with formatting, to the clipboard.
• multiclip mode -- Global minor mode, when enabled, all copies and cuts are exported, with formatting information, to the clipboard.

Supported systems

Copying formatted text to the clipboard is highly system specific. Currently, MS-Windows and WSL (interopable) are supported. Contributions for other systems are most welcome.

Known problems

Font Lock mode, the system providing syntax highlighting in Emacs, use "lazy highlighting". Effectively, this mean that only the visible parts of a buffer are highlighted. The problem with this is that when copying text to the clipboard, only the highlighted parts gets formatting information. To get around this, walk through the buffer, use multiclip-ensure-buffer-is-fontified, or use one of the multiclip-copy- functions.

Implementation

This package use the package htmlize to create an HTML version of a highlighted text. This is added as a new flavor to the clipboard, allowing an application to pick the most suited version. Additional to that, clipboard's changes are now monitored and will be reflect to Emacs before hand, clipboard delay rendering also supported. Copy & Paste and be pleasingly fast.