vim_html_paste

Automation recipe for pasting formatted code from gVIM to Outlook, blog post, etc.

INTRO

Pasting HTML-formatted code from a text editor to e.g. e-mail is a pretty common task. For VIM users, the editor provides 'TOhtml' command to create HTML code for the formatted text, but out-of-the-box this is rather cumbersome to use. The sequence would be something like: select, :TOhtml, save to a file, open in the browser, select/copy, paste into the e-mail. Even worse if you are trying to do same thing from Linux session in the VNC window. Oh, and if you prefer dark color schemes for editing, you probably want to switch to light one for pasting code to an e-mail. After browsing for existing solutions I have created my own simple automation that after some initial setup allows to perform the task in 3 keystrokes, and works both from gVIM under Windows, as well as from gVIM in a VNC.

INSTALL/SETUP

Step 1: Add the following code to your .vimrc:

command! -range=% ClipHtml :call ConvertToClipHtml(<line1>, <line2>)
function! ConvertToClipHtml(line1, line2)
   " Remember current colorscheme, then switch to the one with the
   " light background
   let l:prev_color = g:colors_name
   colorscheme emacs " viable options are: automation, bw, c, emacs, tolerable
   " Convert to HTML and copy to clipboard
   let g:html_font = "Courier New"
   let g:html_start_line = min([a:line1, a:line2])
   let g:html_end_line = max([a:line1, a:line2])
   runtime syntax/2html.vim
   normal gg"+yG
   " Close the buffer and clean up
   bdelete!
   unlet g:html_start_line
   unlet g:html_end_line
   unlet g:html_font
   " restore the original colorscheme
   exec "colorscheme " . l:prev_color
endfunc

This function automates the 2html.vim call: generates HTML for the selected text in a new temporary buffer, copies contents to the system clipboard as text, and closes the temporary buffer. Before generating HTML the color scheme is switched to light-backroung one, and after the task is complete, original color scheme is restored. You can also add a shortcut key to call the above function on the current selection. My personal choice is Shift-C (in visual mode only):

vnoremap C :ClipHtml<CR>

Step 2: Copy clip2html.exe executable to your hard drive and create a shortcut for it either on Windows Desktop or in Windows start menu (in any other location hotkeys won't work). Right-click on the shortcut, select 'Properties', and assign a hotkey combination of your liking. My choice is Ctrl-Shift-V. Alternatively, if you have python installed, you can use the python source script clip2html.py instead and create a shortcut to execute it with python. This script/executable takes clipboard contents as text, and marks it as HTML, so that when it's pasted into HTML-aware context (e.g. Outlook e-mail), the formatted text is pasted.

USAGE

With the above setup, the copy-paste process looks like this:

1. In gVim, select the text and press 'C'
2. Anywhere in Windows, press: Ctrl-Shift-V
3. In the e-mail editor, press: Ctrl-V

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The solution is based on the code from the following sources:

• http://code.activestate.com/recipes/474121
• https://github.com/sgraham/sgraham/blob/master/vimfiles/plugin/cliphtml.vim

thanks guys!

NOTES

Windows executable was created with pyinstaller using the following command:

pyinstaller clip2html.py -F -w --distpath .