Authors often need to paste in their XML documents text blocks copied from a word processor.

Without a special command, doing so is tedious because:

A special command can do all this automatically. Such a command is a validating one because the author must not be allowed to insert captured paragraphs in places which would make the document invalid.

The paste command in XMLmind XML Editor - Commands can be passed plain text or an XML string (a string which starts with "<?xml ") as its parameter. So why not use this standard validating command to do the paragraph insertion?

The idea here is to write a simple command, MakeParagraphsCmd, which returns an XML string containing one or several paragraphs built using clipboard content. This string is then passed to the paste command which inserts the paragraphs (if the XML Schema or the DTD constraining the document allows to do so).

Note that MakeParagraphsCmd cannot be used alone. It must be part of a macro-command such as the following one (DocBook example):

<command name="insertAfterAsSimpara">
  <macro>
    <sequence>
      <command name="MakeParagraphsCmd" parameter="simpara" />
      <command name="paste" parameter="after[implicitElement] %_" />
    </sequence>
  </macro>
</command>

Excerpts from MakeParagraphsCmd.java:

public class MakeParagraphsCmd extends CommandBase {
    private Name elementName;
    private boolean blocks;
    private String pastable;

    public MakeParagraphsCmd() {
        super(/*repeatable*/ false, /*recordable*/ true);
    }

    public boolean prepare(DocumentView docView, 
                           String parameter, int x, int y) {
        elementName = null;
        blocks = false;
        pastable = null;

        if (docView.getDocument() == null) {
            return false;
        }
        
        if (parameter == null || parameter.length() == 0) {
            return false;
        }

        String name = null;
        int pos = parameter.lastIndexOf(']');
        if (pos < 0) {
            name = parameter;
        } else if (pos+1 < parameter.length()) {
            name = parameter.substring(pos+1);
        }

        if (name != null) {
            elementName = Name.fromString(name.trim());
        }
        if (elementName == null) {
            return false;
        }

        blocks = (parameter.indexOf("[blocks]") >= 0);

        pastable = docView.getXMLClipboard().get();
        if (pastable == null || pastable.length() == 0 || 
            pastable.startsWith("<?xml ")) {
            return false;
       }

        return true;
    }
    ...

    public CommandResult doExecute(DocumentView docView, 
                                   String parameter, int x, int y) {
        ArrayList<String> textList = new ArrayList<String>();

        StringBuilder block = new StringBuilder();

        LineNumberReader lines = 
            new LineNumberReader(new StringReader(pastable));
        String line;
        while ((line = readLine(lines)) != null) {
            line = XMLText.collapseWhiteSpace(line);
            if (line.length() == 0) { 
                // Open line.
                if (blocks && block.length() > 0) {
                    textList.add(block.toString());
                    block = new StringBuilder();
                }

                continue;
            }

            line = XMLText.filterText(line);

            if (blocks) {
                if (block.length() > 0) {
                    block.append(' ');
                }
                block.append(line);
            } else {
                textList.add(line);
            }
        }

        if (blocks && block.length() > 0) {
            textList.add(block.toString());
        }

        int count = textList.size();
        if (count == 0) {
            return CommandResult.FAILED;
        }

        // The content of the clipboard is fetched as a *Java String*. 
        // Therefore no need to specify encoding in the XML declaration.

        StringBuilder result = new StringBuilder();
        result.append("<?xml version='1.0'?>");

        openTag(ClipboardFormat.ENVELOPE_NAME, result);
        for (int i = 0; i < count; ++i) {
            String text = (String) textList.get(i);

            openTag(elementName, result);
            XMLText.escapeXML(text, result);
            closeTag(elementName, result);
        }
        closeTag(ClipboardFormat.ENVELOPE_NAME, result);
        
        return CommandResult.done(result.toString());
    }

<?xml version="1.0"?><p>Paragraph #1.</p>

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<ns:clipboard
  xmlns:ns="http://www.xmlmind.com/xmleditor/namespace/clipboard">
  <p>Paragraph #1.</p>
  <p>Paragraph #2.</p>
</ns:clipboard>