Rich Clipboard — HTML (CF_HTML)

The base clipboard module handles plain text (CF_UNICODETEXT) and image (CF_DIB) only. Pasting formatted content into Word / Outlook / a rich editor needs the CF_HTML format, whose Version / StartHTML / EndHTML / StartFragment / EndFragment byte-offset header is notoriously error-prone to build by hand. build_cf_html / parse_cf_html compute and recover that header in pure Python (a fully unit-tested round-trip, correct across multi-byte UTF-8), and set_clipboard_html / get_clipboard_html wrap them over the Win32 clipboard.

The byte-offset math is platform-independent and headless-testable; only the actual clipboard I/O is Windows (raising RuntimeError elsewhere, like the base module). Imports no PySide6.

Headless API

from je_auto_control import (build_cf_html, parse_cf_html,
                             set_clipboard_html, get_clipboard_html)

set_clipboard_html("<b>Bold</b> and <i>italic</i>",
                   fragment_plaintext="Bold and italic")   # Windows
html = get_clipboard_html()                                 # Windows

# The pure pieces work anywhere (e.g. to pre-build a payload):
payload = build_cf_html("<p>hello</p>")     # bytes, valid CF_HTML
assert parse_cf_html(payload) == "<p>hello</p>"

build_cf_html returns valid CF_HTML UTF-8 bytes whose offsets point exactly at the fragment; parse_cf_html recovers the fragment from bytes or text (preferring the comment markers, falling back to the byte offsets). set_clipboard_html also seeds plain text via fragment_plaintext so apps that ignore HTML still paste something.

Executor commands

AC_set_clipboard_html (html / fragment_plaintext → {set, length}) and AC_get_clipboard_html (→ {found, html}). They are exposed as the MCP tools ac_set_clipboard_html / ac_get_clipboard_html and as Script Builder commands under Data.