Creating a TiddlyWiki Macro to Copy Plain Text from Formatted Content

Developers
, , , ,
1

I am still new to TiddlyWiki macros.

Browser : Chrome
OS: Windows 11
TiddlyWiki version: 5.3.5

I tried to make macro that can copy the text with WikiText formatting or any HTML code into clipboard.
But the copied output should be plain text.

<!------------------ MACROS DEFINITION ----------------->
\define text-to-copy(sentence)

<!-- I want to `$sentence$` variable to be plain text when copy even the text has style formatting-->
<<copy-to-clipboard """$sentence$""" style="position;relative; float:right;">>

<div style="background-color: #f5f5f5; border: 1px solid #8D8D8D;">
$sentence$
</div>
\end
<!------------------------------------------------------------>

<!------------------ EXAMPLE ----------------->
<<text-to-copy """This is @@color:red;red@@ and ''bold''.""">>
<!------------------------------------------------------------>

The appearance is like below image.

image
image695Ă—134 3.7 KB

My desired output when copied to clipboard is only plain text This is red and bold NOT includes the WikiText like This is @@color:red;red@@ and ''bold''.

Can anyone help me on this or any reference that I can try? Thanks!

2

To remove all formatting, you can use the $wikify widget, like this:

<$wikify name="clip" text="""$sentence$""">
<$macrocall $name="copy-to-clipboard" src=<<clip>> style="position;relative; float:right;"/>

Note: because we now need to pass the clip variable to the copy-to-clipboard macro, we have to use the <$macrocall $name="copy-to-clipboard" .../> widget syntax with named parameters instead of the macro shortcut syntax (e.g. <<copy-to-clipboard ...>>)

Also note that \define and <$macrocall $name=.../> syntax have been “deprecated” (but can still be used if you want). The newer equivalent syntax is to use \procedure and <$transclude $variable=.../>, like this:

\procedure text-to-copy(sentence)
<$wikify name="clip" text=<<sentence>>>
<$transclude $variable="copy-to-clipboard" src=<<clip>> style="position;relative; float:right;"/>
<div style="background-color: #f5f5f5; border: 1px solid #8D8D8D;">
<<sentence>>
</div>
\end

Note that \procedure automatically creates internal variables for each parameter name, so we use <<sentence>> instead of """$sentence$""".

enjoy,
-e

1 Like
3

Thanks, @EricShulman
Cool! Seems like what I wanted.

<!-- Procedure definition-->
\procedure text-to-copy(sentence)
<$wikify name="clip" output="text" text="""<<sentence>>""">
<$transclude $variable="copy-to-clipboard" src=<<clip>> style="position;relative; float:right;"/>
<div style="background-color: #f5f5f5; border: 1px solid #8D8D8D;">
<<sentence>>
</div>
\end

<!-- Procedure call-->
<<text-to-copy """
First Line : Hello world. ''Bold'' and @@color:red;red@@ <br>*<br>
Second line : Hello world. ''Bold'' and @@color:red;red@@ <br>*<br>*<br>
Third line:  Hello world. ''Bold'' and @@color:red;red@@
"""
>>

However, it did not let me to copy text with multi-line because when I copied, even it has 2 or 3 break line, the copied content assumes it just one break line.

image
image752Ă—156 2.74 KB

Output like below:

image
image529Ă—127 5.05 KB

Any other TiddlyWiki widget should I use or check?

4

Somehow I found workaround for my problem! I used <pre> tag in HTML to preserve the line breaks when copying the multi-line formatted text. I put the tag when entering the text, not inside procedure.

<!-- Procedure definition-->
\procedure text-to-copy(sentence)
<$wikify name="clip" output="text" text="""<<sentence>>""">
<$transclude $variable="copy-to-clipboard" src=<<clip>> style="position;relative; float:right;"/>
<div style="background-color: #f5f5f5; border: 1px solid #8D8D8D;">
<<sentence>>
</div>
\end

<!-- Procedure call-->
<<text-to-copy """<pre>First Line : Hello world. ''Bold'' and @@color:red;red@@ 
*
Second line : Hello world. //Italic// and @@color:red;red@@ 
*
*
Third line:  @@Hello world@@. __Underline__ and @@color:red;red@@
*
*
*
Last Line</pre>"""
>>

image
image695Ă—268 3.98 KB

Here’s the output after I copied and pasted in other text file.

image
image490Ă—203 3.52 KB

If anyone got better solutions, feel free to share :slight_smile:

5

I suppose there might be a use-case where you don’t want to preserve newlines, but it seems to me that you could put the <pre>...</pre> tags inside the procedure, like this:

<$wikify name="clip" output="text" text="""<pre><<sentence>></pre>""">

-e

1 Like