Re:How the Clipboard Works
by enriquto on Tuesday October 25, 2022 @04:11AM
(#33327612)
I understand this concern. But it seems that it would be better to have an orthogonal implementation of this. The clipboard remains text-only. If you select an image or a file, it copies its absolute path (or url) into the clipboard. Then it is the responsibility of the destination program to interpret what to do with this text. If you paste the filename of an image into a plain text editor, you'll get the filename verbatim. If you paste it into an image editor, it opens and pastes the image in there. But from the point of view of the clipboard it's always just text (maybe with some textual markers).
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Or better: The data URI gets copied.
But I already downloaded the image, I don't want to download it again. What if I want to copy a subsection of an image from an image editor, there is no textual representation as it is not a file on disk.
That breaks common use cases such as copy-pasting private images that can only be downloaded using your login cookies.
> If you paste the filename of an image into a plain text editor, you'll get the filename verbatim. If you paste it into an image editor, it opens and pastes the image in there
That's how the clipboard already works on Windows as long as the source application provides both formats.