The OS/2 operating system provides three standard display formats for applications that use private formats: CF_DSPTEXT, CF_DSPBITMAP, and CF_DSPMETAFILE. These formats correspond to the standard text, bit map, and metafile formats, with the exception that they are intended for use only by the clipboard viewer. An application that uses a private format should write one of the DSP formats that approximates the appearance of the private data so that the clipboard viewer can display the data regardless of the format. For example, a word processor using the rich-text format also would write a CF_DSPBITMAP formatted picture of the selected text that contains all the type fonts and styles.

Notice that you can choose delayed rendering for DSP formats because there might not always be a clipboard viewer active on the screen. With delayed rendering, an application actually does not render the format unless it is requested to do so.