Re: App-specific URLs and the pasteboard. Need help.

FROM : Duncan Champney
DATE : Sat Jan 19 13:59:08 2008

On Jan 18, 2008, at 11:05 AM, Alastair Houghton wrote:

> On 18 Jan 2008, at 15:27, Duncan Champney wrote:
>

>> I build my URL string in the variable theURLString, then add it to 
>> the general pasteboard using the following code:
>>
>>      theFW_URL = [NSURL URLWithString:theURLString];
>>      [theFW_URL writeToPasteboard: thePasteBoard];
>>      NSString* theURLName = [NSString stringWithFormat: 
>> NSLocalizedString(@FW_URL_PREFIX ,nil), theDocumentName];
>>      success = [thePasteBoard setString:theURLName forType: 
>> NSStringPboardType];

>
> Have you tried NSURLPboardType?
>
> Or NSHTMLPboardType with HTML containing a link?
>
> Or, for that matter, NSRTFPboardType, which I think you'll find can 
> hold links too; you can make RTF fairly easily from an 
> NSAttributedString, and if that string happened to contain a link 
> (hint: see NSLinkAttributeName), I think you'll get the behaviour 
> you want.
>
> At present, I think you're relying on the end application to parse 
> your text into a link, which won't work in many cases.
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Alastair.
>
> --
> http://alastairs-place.net
>
>


Alastair,

I was using NSURLPboardType, but I don't think I was using it correctly.

Based on your advice, I tried using NSHTMLPboardType. That worked 
better, but still not ideally.

As you say, NSRTFPboardType seems to work with the widest variety of 
applications. What I do now is to write RTF to the pasteboard, and 
also write some HTML as a string. The HTML string is useful for 
posting links to websites. Here's the code I came up with:

        NSArray* types = [NSArray arrayWithObjects: NSRTFPboardType, 
NSStringPboardType, nil];
        [thePasteBoard declareTypes:types owner: nil];
        theFW_URL = [NSURL URLWithString:theURLString]; //theURLString 
contains the text of the URL
        [theFW_URL writeToPasteboard: thePasteBoard];
        //Create string "Fractalworks plot <theDocumentName>
        NSString* theURLName = [NSString stringWithFormat: 
NSLocalizedString(@FW_URL_PREFIX ,nil), theDocumentName];
        theFW_URL = [NSURL URLWithString:theURLString];
       
        //Create an NSAttributedString to hold the RTF description of the URL.
        theStringRange.location = 0;
        theStringRange.length = [theURLName length];
        theAttributesDict = [NSDictionary dictionaryWithObject: theFW_URL 
forKey: NSLinkAttributeName];
        theRTF_string= [[NSAttributedString alloc] initWithString: 
theURLName attributes:theAttributesDict];
        NSData* the_RTF_data = [theRTF_string RTFFromRange: theStringRange 
documentAttributes: nil];
        success = [thePasteBoard setData:the_RTF_data forType: 
NSRTFPboardType];
        //Also write a string with HTML text into the pasterboard, for apps 
that can't deal with the RTF data.
        theURLString =  [NSString stringWithFormat: @"<u><a href=\"%@\">%@</
a></u>", theURLString, theURLName];
        success = [thePasteBoard setString:theURLString forType: 
NSStringPboardType];

Older Carbon apps like Appleworks don't seem to work with this code, 
though. They take the "vanilla" text from the RTF, rather than using 
the NSStringPboardType like you'd expect.
I have a preference to "write application URLS as text" and in that 
case, I write just the NSStringPboardType data containing the URL to 
the pasteboard. (That code isn't shown for the sake of brevity.)

Thanks again for your help.


Duncan