OpenClip.org Offers Copy and Paste for iPhone Across Apps

[TsuaSai]

http://www.geekbrief.tv/copy-and-paste-for-iphone

[mcdj]

I hate to see all that effort go to waste. Either Apple will do C&P themselves, or will continue to ignore it. Either way, 3rd party cut and paste will remain isolated from Safari, Mail, Notes and SMS...the places we all want it the most...and thereby, as proven by the relatively low interest in MagicPad, will remain for the most part, useless.

[Ntombi]

That's a cool idea, and better than nothing, but I won't be satisfied until Apple implements it across all the platforms. The apps I use C/P the most are native: Mail, Contacts, Safari, and SMS, which means this won't help me much.

[TsuaSai]

Originally Posted by Ntombi

That's a cool idea, and better than nothing, but I won't be satisfied until Apple implements it across all the platforms. The apps I use C/P the most are native: Mail, Contacts, Safari, and SMS, which means this won't help me much.

Yeah i feel the same way. Like you said better than nothing for now.

[wronski]

Very good idea. Pretty much as Apple should have done it, just with support for selections.

[Mr. Giver '94]

Originally Posted by mcdj

I hate to see all that effort go to waste. Either Apple will do C&P themselves, or will continue to ignore it. Either way, 3rd party cut and paste will remain isolated from Safari, Mail, Notes and SMS...the places we all want it the most...and thereby, as proven by the relatively low interest in MagicPad, will remain for the most part, useless.

+1 Since apps can't affect the core applications, these apps are basically a substitute for Notes. Pointless.

[MacRumors]

Many will remember Proximi's MagicPad [App Store] iPhone application which was the first to offer a 3rd party notepad application for the iPhone with copy and paste functionality. Of course, due to the constraints of the iPhone SDK, Promixi was only able to provide copy and paste functionality within their own application.

Promixi, however, took it a step further and proposed an interface for system-wide copy and paste on the iPhone. While Apple has acknowledged that iPhone copy and paste is in their plans, it has simply not been a high enough priority for them.

Student developer Zac White has since taken matters in his own hands and founded a non-profit, open source, community project called OpenClip which is offering iPhone developers a free Copy and Paste framework that will add this functionality to their applications. This will allow copy and paste functionality between supported applications.

OpenClip accomplishes this feat while still following the rules of Apple's SDK. iPhone applications are allowed to read from other application's files but only write to their own. By creating a standard location for each application's "clipboard", applications can "copy" by simply saving data locally and "paste" by pulling the most recently saved data across all applications.

A demonstration of the OpenClip is shown in GeekBrief.tv video with early versions of Twittelator [App Store], WordPress [App Store], and MagicPad [App Store].

These same developers have OpenClip-supported versions coming soon with others pledging support. Developers and users can find more information at OpenClip.org.

Article Link

[amusiccale]

I think this is really quite wonderful news. I'm definitely glad someone's stepping up, and the fact that it lies within the SDK rules shows their inventiveness. We will have to wait and see if other developers get on board. It's a shame Apple couldn't make it a priority, though.

[geerlingguy]

...And this is reason #193 why I like owning Apple products—Developer initiative. If Apple doesn't do it, but people want it, it will happen!

I just hope that either (A) Apple supports this in Safari and Mail, or (B) Apple finally gets on the ball and adds Copy/Paste on their own!

[superstrikertwo]

Originally Posted by kjs862

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 2_0_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.18.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.1 Mobile/5C1 Safari/525.20)

so sick of iPhone news

So sick of useless posts.

This is a great idea if they can pull it off even better I would definitely use the apps if they were useful of course.

[Eduardo1971]

Cali Lewis is hyperverbal. She needs to slow down.

[gibbz]

Very clever method. Hope this gets implemented soon.

[a1016neo]

Meh... I will just wait until the official copy/paste from Apple... Hopefully it's on the short list...

[MacTheSpoon]

Brilliant! Apple devs are so cool.

[orbitaldesign]

As exciting as this is, I think it only provides a bandage solution that some developers will use, some won't and then Apple will come up with their own system that may or may not be compatible with this one. Best case Apple's system would override this and basically just work everywhere, worst case you won't be able to copy and paste from an app using this framework to one that uses the Apple solution and vice versa.

Just my two cents.

orbital

[plumbingandtech]

net result. next to worthless.

this will be forgotten right apple ships the official version.

[arn]

Originally Posted by plumbingandtech

net result. next to worthless.

this will be forgotten right apple ships the official version.

Which could be June 2009. No copy/paste in 2.1. and that's not even out yet.

arn

[TheIguana]

Gross that a 3rd party dev seems to be able to find that time to implement this, yet Apple has the snobby attitude of just shrugging it off as something they will get to in a few years. Gosh Apple just hire a developer to implement feature and get it over with, or open up your SDK terms and let a 3rd party implement this fully.

[nagromme]

Nice!

It won't always be needed, but in the meantime even just having it for one or two apps could be VERY welcome.

And it's a reminder to help Apple bump this up the priority list (Though I suspect it has long been near the top of what they WANT, just not at the top of stuff they could easily get working in the best way.)

[RobbRock]

looks great hope this comes out soon

[solipsism]

Don't get me wrong, this is nice and clever to use a framework to copy paste to a shared area but it's hardly the cut/copy/paste that people have been crying for.

There is no way to dynamically choose specific text that doesn't the developer didn't account for or include as option. It's clever, but if Apple had given that out people would have been crying that Apple is once again trying to control what and how you do things on their devices.

This video while compelling, does prove that the issues for copy and paste are more complex than simply adding a clipboard to store the data.

PS: Cali looks cute there.

[arn]

Originally Posted by solipsism

There is no way to dynamically choose specific text that doesn't the developer didn't account for or include as option. It's clever, but if Apple had given that out people would have been crying that Apple is once again trying to control what and how you do things on their devices.

This video while compelling, does prove that the issues for copy and paste are more complex than simply adding a clipboard to store the data.

While I think the video doesnt demo it, I believe the copy/paste functionality is more complex than shown. See the UI proposal video.

MagicPad offers discrete copy/paste for any span of text.

arn

[therevolution]

I agree it's not really useful, but maybe it will help light a fire under Apple to ship their implementation. Hopefully that fire doesn't burn down any more buildings.

[solipsism]

Originally Posted by arn

While I think the video doesnt demo it, I believe the copy/paste functionality is more complex than shown. See the UI proposal video.

MagicPad offers discrete copy/paste for any span of text.

Thanks. i will check out MagicPad.

[TalkAboutApple]

Originally Posted by therevolution

I agree it's not really useful, but maybe it will help light a fire under Apple to ship their implementation. Hopefully that fire doesn't burn down any more buildings.

Or any gen 1 Nanos.

I assume the OpenClip works by writing a temp file of a predefined structure. That's pretty clever thinking, in fact not a bad way to implement the "real" one.