R 2.7.0 Quartz graphics device clipboard support

Tom Elliot recently posted a request to the R-SIG-Mac list looking for a way to programmatically put graphics onto the clipboard under OS X. Right now this is pretty hard, but I was inspired to patch R-devel's (the future 2.7.0) new Quartz device to allow for clipboard output.

After applying the patch, you can specify file="clipboard://" and when the device is closed (yes, you MUST close the graphics device to see output. It would probably be a good idea to write the file on a NewPage as well, come to think of it). Then you can wrap up a simple function to get copying of the current device to the clipboard (or you can simply open it directly).

copy.to.clipboard = function(dpi=300) { dev.copy(device=quartz,type="png",file="clipboard://",dpi=dpi);dev.close(); }

I've attached the patch for the brave souls willing to try it out:

Index: qdBitmap.c
===================================================================
--- qdBitmap.c  (revision 43081)
+++ qdBitmap.c  (working copy)
@@ -49,16 +49,45 @@
         /* On 10.4+ we can employ the CGImageDestination API to create a
            variety of different bitmap formats */
 #if MAC_OS_X_VERSION_MAX_ALLOWED >= MAC_OS_X_VERSION_10_4
-        CFURLRef    path  = CFURLCreateFromFileSystemRepresentation(kCFAllocatorDefault,(const UInt8*)qbd->path,strlen(qbd->path),FALSE);
-        CFStringRef type  = CFStringCreateWithBytes(kCFAllocatorDefault,(UInt8*)qbd->uti,strlen(qbd->uti),kCFStringEncodingUTF8,FALSE);
-        CGImageDestinationRef dest = CGImageDestinationCreateWithURL(path,type,1,NULL);
-        CGImageRef image = CGBitmapContextCreateImage(qbd->bitmap);
-        CGImageDestinationAddImage(dest,image,NULL);
-        CGImageDestinationFinalize(dest);
-        CFRelease(image);
-        CFRelease(dest);
-        CFRelease(type);
+        CFStringRef pathString = CFStringCreateWithBytes(kCFAllocatorDefault,(UInt8*)qbd->path,strlen(qbd->path),kCFStringEncodingUTF8,FALSE);
+               CFURLRef path;
+               if(CFStringFind(pathString,CFSTR("://"),0).location != kCFNotFound) {
+               CFStringRef pathEscaped= CFURLCreateStringByAddingPercentEscapes(kCFAllocatorDefault,pathString,NULL,NULL,kCFStringEncodingUTF8);
+                       path = CFURLCreateWithString(kCFAllocatorDefault,pathEscaped,NULL);
+                       CFRelease(pathEscaped);
+               } else {
+                       path = CFURLCreateFromFileSystemRepresentation(kCFAllocatorDefault,(const UInt8*)qbd->path,strlen(qbd->path),FALSE);
+               }
+               CFRelease(pathString);
+               
+               CFStringRef scheme = CFURLCopyScheme(path);
+               CFStringRef type  = CFStringCreateWithBytes(kCFAllocatorDefault,(UInt8*)qbd->uti,strlen(qbd->uti),kCFStringEncodingUTF8,FALSE);
+       CGImageRef image = CGBitmapContextCreateImage(qbd->bitmap);
+               if(CFStringCompare(scheme,CFSTR("file"),0) == 0) {
+               CGImageDestinationRef dest = CGImageDestinationCreateWithURL(path,type,1,NULL);
+               CGImageDestinationAddImage(dest,image,NULL);
+               CGImageDestinationFinalize(dest);
+               CFRelease(dest);
+               } else if(CFStringCompare(scheme,CFSTR("clipboard"),0) == 0) {
+                       //Copy our image into data
+                       CFMutableDataRef      data = CFDataCreateMutable(kCFAllocatorDefault,0);
+                       CGImageDestinationRef dest = CGImageDestinationCreateWithData(data,type,1,NULL);
+                       CGImageDestinationAddImage(dest,image,NULL);
+                       CGImageDestinationFinalize(dest);
+                       CFRelease(dest);
+                       PasteboardRef pb = NULL;
+                       if(noErr == PasteboardCreate(kPasteboardClipboard,&pb)) {
+                               PasteboardClear(pb);
+                               PasteboardSyncFlags syncFlags = PasteboardSynchronize(pb);
+                               PasteboardPutItemFlavor(pb,(PasteboardItemID)1,type,data,0);
+                       }
+                       CFRelease(data);
+               } else
+                       warning("Not a supported scheme, no image data written.");
+               CFRelease(scheme);
+               CFRelease(type);
         CFRelease(path);
+               CFRelease(image);
 #endif
     }
     /* Free ourselves */