Pasting Text from PDF into LiveCode Fields

[billenright123]

I have several PDFs (mostly text) that I need to paste into fields for formatted.
However, the fields will not accept the info via Paste command (this works perfectly well in Revolution 4.0).

I can get it to accept if i do the following:
1 Paste text into MS Word.
2 Copy text from MS Word.

Any thoughts?

Thanks

[dunbarx]

Hi.

When you copy the text from the pdf, what does the clipBoardData have in it? Is the clipBoardData empty?

What I mean is that LC should not care what the source of the data is.

You see what I am getting at.

Craig Newman

[Simon]

Hi billenright123,
There are methods of locking pdf documents that prevent people from copying and pasting. You should try to copy and paste just into notepad or textedit to remove LC from the equation.

Simon

[jacque]

The same problem used to happen when copying from Word, so you are one step ahead. It was a bug that RR fixed a while back. I believe there was another app as well that also loaded the clipboard with unusual content but I can't remember which one it was.

That said, I just tried copying from a PDF here and it pastes fine into a LiveCode field. Are you doing a manual paste, or trying to script it?

[wje123]

Following up on this topic (after being side-tracked for a while).

1 – Only certain PDFs cause this problem (one is attached).
2 – The PDFs are not Locked.
3 – The data readily pastes into Word and other programs.
4 – I have tried clipboardData["text"], etc. None work.
5 – “Put the clipboard data” (in messagebox) does not return anything. Yet the data is there if I go to Word and paste.

I also have strange results pasting in data from Excel.

I know there are work arounds (pasted into Word first, etc.), but it should not be that complicated.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

[jacque]

You could test what's in the clipboard:

Code: Select all

on cliptest
  put the keys of the clipboarddata into tKeys
  repeat for each line k in tKeys
    put the clipboarddata[k] & cr after tList
  end repeat
  put tlist
end cliptest

Copy a small bit of the problem text and then run that handler, see what you get. It should at least tell you if anything is transferring over at all.

[wje123]

This is the result (whether 1 char or the entire PDF is copied)


REVO5500
{\rtf1\mac {\colortbl;\red0\green0\blue0;}
\pard
}

Thanks
Bill

[jacque]

It looks like it is capturing some RTF info but no text and nothing else. Probably worth a bug report.

[Mark]

Hi,

Apparently, LiveCode is treating the PDF data as an object, which contains an RTF snippet. Try this: in the message box:

Code: Select all

put the clipboarddata["object"]

What do you get? If you get the same as what you pasted in your previous message, then this is a bug, although at this point I'm not sure whether this bug would be in the PDF reader or in LiveCode.

Kind regards,

Mark

[wje123]

Unfortunately, nothing is returned.

As an interim solution, I have created a macro in Keyboard Maestro.
It pastes the clipboard into TextEdit and then copies the pasted text back to the clipboard.
Not elegant, but fast.

Thanks for the suggestion.
Bill

[rinzwind]

Somehow copying pasting from the vba editor in Excel (alt+f11) doesn't show up in the clipboarddata too...
Don't know why... pasting into notepad works. And copying in from notepad works too. But directly from the VBA editor does not work.