Pasting HTML to the clipboard to be used by Windows native apps

Question

I'm having problems creating a DataFlavor that will allow me to write a
string to the clipboard in html format so that a windows native app (e.g.
MS Word) can recognise this format and allow me the option of
pasting as html rather than just plain text.
I've found that if I alter my code to first get the contents off the
clipboard (some html I copy from an Internet Explorer-viewed web page), I
can extract the html DataFlavor from the Transferable object that IE has
placed on the clipboard. If I then use this "stolen" DataFlavor to write my
contents to the clipboard, I find that I can successfully paste as HTML in a
windows native app.
However, since I can't rely on grabbing some html from IE just to get a
suitable DataFlavor each time I need to use my copy function, I have been
attempting to construct my own DataFlavor to match the characteristics of
the IE example flavour.
The problem is that, having set the representation class, MIMEType and human
presentable name to match the IE flavor, when I call DataFlavor.equals() to
compare the two flavours it returns false, and my constructed flavour
subsequently fails to show up as a paste option in any native apps. Having
compared every possible property of both flavours, I've concluded that the
only difference between the two is that the IE flavour has the charset
parameter set as utf-8, whereas my constructed flavour has no charset
parameter specified. I have found no way to manually set the charset. So
calling getMimeType() on each flavour gives:
IEDataFlavor.getMimeType() = text/html; class=java.io.InputStream; charset=utf-8
MyOwnDataFlavor.getMimeType() = text/html; class=java.io.InputStream
Using the Windows Clipboard viewer I have observed that my constructed
DataFlavor does exist on the clipboard, however whereas the IE flavour's
visible name is "HTML Format", mine is "JAVA_DATAFLAVOR: text/html;
class=java.io.InputStream"
and I think this is the reason that native windows apps are failing to
recognise my DataFlavor as a valid option for display.
I'm using jdk 1.3.1
If anyone has ever encountered this problem or can think of a solution I'd
be extremely grateful for your help.
Thanks,
Steve White

Answer 1

I have a similar problem:
IE actually put the "HTML Format"(CF_HMTL) flavor into the clipboard, with some additional info, such as SourceURL as the description.
see
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/workshop/networking/clipboard/htmlclipboard.asp
How will this information be available to Java clipboard?
Main question, for HTML data pasted by IE into the clipboard, how to get the source url.
I know some Windows native apps could get that info nicely.
Thanks!