paste_img from a copied file path

[sirex]

🚀 The feature, motivation and pitch

I want to copy just image path to an existing file. And I would like to use paste_img to copy that image, to Obsidian's files directory.

For example, if I copy /tmp/image.jpg, then running :Obsidian paste_img would copy /tmp/image.jpg to ~/vault/images/image.jpg.

Alternatives

An alternative would be, to always copy image to clipboard first, something like this:

convert /tmp/image.jpg png:- | xclip -i -selection clipboard -target image/png

But this involves image conversion and adding it to clipboard, then existing paste_img functionality would work.

Or I could simply copy image file to vault manually and then use it in .md file, but that is not very convenient.

[neo451]

I did not write the image paste part and have little knowledge on it, so I did not fully get your question

are you asking Obsidian paste_img to check if the clipboard have a string path, and check if the path is an image, if so do the copy operation? If so then it sound like a good idea

[sirex]

are you asking Obsidian paste_img to check if the clipboard have a string path, and check if the path is an image, if so do the copy operation? If so then it sound like a good idea

Yes, I mean exactly that.

For example, when I copy a file, from Thunar file manager, I get this:

$ xclip -o -selection clipboard -t STRING
/path/to/image.jpg

In this case, attempt to get an image data from clipboard would fail:

$ xclip -o -selection clipboard -t image/png
Error: target image/png not available

$ echo $?
1

Returning exit code 1.

If there is no image data in clipboard, then we could try to check if clipboard contains a string, which is a path, to an existing file, which is also an image file. If this is the case, then obsidian.nvim could simple copy it to the Vault.

[toliy-dev]

I am currently working on refactoring, expanding, and writing test cases for :Obsidian paste_img, as mentioned in #508, and will focus on Linux operating system with jpeg images first, so I hope that will help with your workflow as I don't think you would need to then do the jpg to png conversion step.

I'm hoping to create a pull request for that by the end of the day. I could also take a look into expanding this feature after I am done with that, unless this is something you would want to work on yourself.

[sirex]

I'm not fluent in Lua, so I would be happy if you would work on this feature after you're done with the current pull request.

[neo451]

closing this one for now, since I thing although the feature seems intuitive once you say it, it would be better for the paste img module to have less add on logic, since it is something that needs heavy refactor, and for now just use the solution in #844

[neo451]

for reference since I'll transform this to a discussion:

local log = require "obsidian.log"

local paste_from_path = function()
  local path = vim.trim(vim.fn.getreg "+")
  if path == "" then
    return log.warn "Clipboard is empty"
  end

  local stat_path = vim.startswith(path, "file://") and vim.uri_to_fname(path) or path
  if not vim.uv.fs_stat(stat_path) then
    return log.warn("Clipboard does not contain a valid path: %s", path)
  end

  vim.schedule(function()
    require("obsidian.attachment").add(path, { insert = true })
  end)
end