Commenter Ivo wants to know if the Register­Clipboard­Format function returns a UINT, why is the CLIP­FORMAT data type defined to be a WORD? Since a WORD is smaller than a UINT, you have to stick in a cast every time you assign the result of Register­Clipboard­Format to a CLIP­FORMAT. Rewind to 16-bit Windows. Back in those days, a UINT and a WORD were the same size, namely, 16 bits. As a result, people got lazy about the distinction. Six of one, a half dozen of the other. (People are lazy about this sort of distinction even today, assuming for example that UINT and DWORD are the same size, and in turn forcing UINT to remain a 32-bit integer type even on 64-bit Windows.) The Register­Clipboard­Format function came first, and when the OLE folks wanted to define a friendly name for the data type to hold a clipboard format, they said, “Well, a clipboard format is a 16-bit integer, so let me use a 16-bit integer.” A WORD is a 16-bit integer, so there you go. This mismatch had no effect in 16-bit code, but once Win32 showed up, you had a problem since 32-bit Windows expanded the UINT type to 32 bits. Not only does keeping a CLIP­FORMAT in a WORD create the need for all this casting, it also leaves two bytes of padding in the FORMAT­ETC structure. Strike two.

Yeah, basically, it sucks.