Paste an image on clipboard to Emacs Org mode file without saving it

Question

As I'm using the Emacs Org mode as a research log, sometime I want to keep track of something via screenshot images, and I definitely don't want to save them. So I'm wondering is there any way to insert those figures into my org mode file, like with word coping them from clipboard?

Answer 1

The exact functionality you want isn't currently implemented, but I would be skeptical of saving lots of images into a research log if your opinion is that you "definitely don't want to save them."

Anyways, the functionality you desire has been expressed in the org-mode mailing list a couple of times in recent years - check

http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.orgmode/33770

http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/msg50862.html

The first link includes some code to launch a screenshot utility (via ImageMagick) to [uniquely] save the file and insert an inline link in your org-mode buffer.

As stated in that thread, the code was improved upon and added to org-mode hacks page - which has lots of useful gems:

http://orgmode.org/worg/org-hacks.html

(defun my-org-screenshot ()
  "Take a screenshot into a time stamped unique-named file in the
same directory as the org-buffer and insert a link to this file."
  (interactive)
  (setq filename
        (concat
         (make-temp-name
          (concat (buffer-file-name)
                  "_"
                  (format-time-string "%Y%m%d_%H%M%S_")) ) ".png"))
  (call-process "import" nil nil nil filename)
  (insert (concat "[[" filename "]]"))
  (org-display-inline-images))