listings: Copy to clipboard feature?

Question

I was just wonder if it would be possible to have a "Copy to Clipboard Button" next to each listing which would just copy the verbatim content of the lstlistings environment to the clipboard.

An acroread-only solution would suffice for my purposes.

Answer 1

Ok, here are two approaches, both of which not perfect, both of which not 100% what was requested. But maybe together we can optimise them :-)

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{listings}
\usepackage{attachfile}
\usepackage{accsupp}
\usepackage{verbatim}
\usepackage{color}
\usepackage[misc]{ifsym}

\definecolor{lstbgcolor}{rgb}{0.9,0.9,0.9} 

\makeatletter
\lst@RequireAspects{writefile}

% Use \attachfile command to add listing content as paperclip.
\lstnewenvironment{attachedlisting}{%
  \lst@BeginAlsoWriteFile{\jobname.lsttmp}%
}
{%
  \lst@EndWriteFile
  \marginpar{\attachfile[appearance=false,icon=Paperclip,mimetype=text/tex]{\jobname.lsttmp}}
}

% Use accsupp package to add listing content as copyable text.
\lstnewenvironment{copyablelisting}{%
  \lst@BeginAlsoWriteFile{\jobname.lsttmp}%
}
{%
  \lst@EndWriteFile
  \let\verbatim@processline\add@lstline
  \global\let\lstfile\empty
  \verbatiminput{\jobname.lsttmp}%
  \marginpar{(\BeginAccSupp{method=escape,ActualText={\lstfile}}\PaperPortrait\EndAccSupp{})}
}
\def\add@lstline
{\xdef\lstfile{\unexpanded\expandafter{\lstfile}\the\verbatim@line\string^^J}}
\makeatother

\begin{document}

  \lstset{breakatwhitespace=true,breaklines=true,language=[LaTeX]TeX,basicstyle=\small\ttfamily,flexiblecolumns,backgroundcolor=\color{lstbgcolor}}

  \begin{attachedlisting}
    \documentclass{article}
    \title{Cartesian closed categories and the price of eggs}
    \author{Jane Doe}
    \date{September 1994}
    \begin{document}
      \maketitle
      Hello world!
    \end{document}
  \end{attachedlisting}

  \begin{copyablelisting}
    \documentclass{article}
    \title{Cartesian closed categories and the price of eggs}
    \author{Jane Doe}
    \date{September 1994}
    \begin{document}
      \maketitle
      Hello world!
    \end{document}
  \end{copyablelisting}

\end{document}

The first environment, attachedlisting displays a paper clip which allows to open the listing contents in an editor (or save to file).

The second environment, copyablelisting displays a symbol which, when copied, will paste to the listing contents.

Open Issues

1. Placement of symbols: As the listings environment needs to be ended before the file is completely written, the placement of the "target symbol" is a problem. To get it to the top, probably two runs would be neccessary.
2. Copy Symbol: I wasn't able to make a single character which will paste to the listing content. Somehow this trick won't work if the "copy symbol" is not surrounded by at least one "normal" character on both sides and those are also copied. Hence, at the moment, you'll get two superfluous characters before and after the listing text. I also wasn't able to make them "invisible" somehow.

So this is as good as I can make it for the time being. I'm open to suggestions of course.