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OpenClip.org Offers Copy and Paste for iPhone Across Apps

Awesome. Thank you dev's, for picking up the slack, while Apple happily ignores what their users want.

Oh, but "we're going to clean up in the Enterprise market"... without copy & paste... right.

Perhaps in Apples indifference, they'll simply go along with the open source version of C&P. If they ever get a programmer off trying to stop the phone from hanging and crashing like nuts.

Grumblegrumblegrumble....
 
kjs862 said:
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
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Did you miss the prominent use of the word iPhone in the title? :rolleyes:


I do like that the developer can choose whether to support HTML or plain text too; that's a cool add-on.

I'm going to be interested to see which developers/apps sign on with this "solution."
 
arn said:
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.
Click to expand...

Just went to their site and watched the video. I was so impressed that they realise the implementation Apple needs has to be more thought out for future usage and their ideas as to how to best implement it correctly that I bought their app even though I really don't think I'll be using it.
 
mcdj said:
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.
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YEah I agree with you.
It really is a great idea... but wouldn't it be easier if Apple just implemented it themselves?!

coughmmswouldbegreattoocough
 
Sad that an indi developer can come up with something this respectable while Apple twiddles thumbs and can't introduce something this simple after so long.

Though to be fair, as i found out the other day, there is no undo function in email on a Blackerry 8700 which would be viewed as very useful when you accidentally select the wrong command.
 
i think apple feels pretty dumb now, that people are doing this on their own. C'mon Apple. I am sure its not that hard. If Zack can do it, you can perfect it.

But, I would love seeing iPhone running smoothly before Copy&Paste though.:)
 
I glad they decided to go with the tap and hold instead of the stupid double tap. It looks pretty good and at the rate Apple is moving, this might be our best solution.

Just need a Safari app that takes advantage of it.

So where is this info being copied to a pic, a contact??
 
DipDog3 said:
I glad they decided to go with the tap and hold instead of the stupid double tap. It looks pretty good and at the rate Apple is moving, this might be our best solution.
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They only show tap and hold because it's not copying from an text input field where the Magnifier is used. I'm betting that doublet-tap for text input fields is still in place.


koobcamuk said:
How doesn't tap and hold conflict with the magnifier? :confused:
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It would conflict unless there was another action involved or an additional time delay.
 
Only Apple will be able to enable the kind of copy and paste we all want, across all applications. But I'm sure that's not easy and could be a security issue.
 
This is an ok alternative I suppose. It still wont integrate with Safari, Mail or Contacts and those are the places Im most likely to want to copy / paste content.

dude, is it me, or is cali lewis pretty hot?
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She looks awkward to me
 
Did anyone else notice that lag when she was scrolling through her 'tweets'?. Anyway, it seems like a good idea but i just dont think it'll take off...but...we'll see
 
What I dont get here is when she 'held' her finger on the screen the C&P window popped up. Doesnt that clash with the magnifying glass? What if you wanted to get the magnifying glass instead of C&P?

I still think the way I mentioned before is a much more elegant way of implementing cut and paste.

Just tap and hold (to get around bringing up the magnifier) at the start or end of the text you wish to copy or cut. Then while still holding drag (highlight) over the text you wish to copy, when you release your finger a menu could pop up with 3 options 'cut, copy or paste'. Select what you want. Go to where you require the new text to be pasted then tap hold and release and the same menu pops up so you can now choose 'paste' from the menu.

When highlighting the text accuracy maybe a little bit of a problem so to improve it you move the cursor before hand to the start of the text you wish to copy to help the phone select the correct starting point.

EDIT: HOLY CRAP they nicked my idea! I just watched the other video. Good job I submitted it to Apple ages ago. My way also doesnt require the extra tap. :D At least what these guys have done shows it can be done and will hopefully push Apple into implementing it.
 
This is nice, but I'm waiting for it to become part of the basic iPhone OS. Hopefully, :apple: will get around to supporting something like this officially soon. It's overdue.
 
It Could Be Useful If...

These developers will spur Apple on to release a native version of copy-and-paste. Therefore, this is good work.

For several weeks, my WordPress app icon has languished on my homescreen untouched because I do not blog without posting links, and I can't post links without copy-and-paste.

At this point, the trick is to get a URL from Safari to the WordPress app. Oddly enough, there is a snippet of Javascript that already does this within Safari, creating a blog post in the web-based version of WP, but not with the new WordPress app.

A potential, partial, solution would be for Google Reader to join OpenClip so we could save a story in Google Reader, then copy the URL from there to the WordPress app. However, since the Google Reader is a web-based app that runs in Safari, perhaps that could not work under Apple's iPhone SDK.

Think with me now...

Another possibility would be for the WordPress app to let you email a new blog post to the app. This way, you could email it from Google Reader, which would initiate a new blog post.

Some days, I wish I had fewer ideas, and more coding skill.

Thanks to all those doing this good work...including Cali for bringing it to my attention.

Scott Ott, editor
ScrappleFace.com
 
mcdj said:
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.
Click to expand...

God damn it! It's so true!! I hate you for pointing that out! :D

I'm so glad the guy is doing this though! I hope iPhone lovers out there embrace his efforts and give him a ton of props for what he's doing for the Apple community. Apple is snoozing on this and I hope this guy gets something out of this, actually a lot!!
 
Drobo girl...

Despite how great copy and paste is for the iPhone, I've still gotta say that the coolest thing about Cali's story is that my daughter was pictured at the end. :)

(Like daddy, she digs the Drobo too!)




blakespot
 
Maybe this is how Apple recruits new people ;D
They used copy&paste instead of an interview...or something.
 
Implementing data sharing isn't the complex part of the CnP issue on the iPhone.

It's providing system-wide support at the UI level, i.e., no coding required for applications using system UI components. Implementing cut and paste for each UI component in a consistent and natural manner is probably what is taking Apple time.

But once it is done, then any system text area, image, etc, will be cut and pasteable.

However for custom UI components you would have to implement your own cut and paste anyway, and in the absence of a system CnP framework this one makes sense. I guess it's just a file or SQLite entry that records the mime-type of the data, the data (possibly base64 encoded for binary), a plaintext representation, and the time it was copied/cut. This could logically be extended to provide a clipboard history quite easily, so I presume this code can do that.

And it is rather appalling that Apple have taken so long to get an implementation of cut and paste, and it could be even longer before one appears. Still, I guess if they're doing it the 'right way' ...
 
it's unlikely that apple apps will support this. the most likely use would be copying part of a text and past it into an email or copying a number and past it in the phone app. since that won't be possible whats the use of this app? and in a few month apple will introduce their own copy paste that will work systemwide anyway. so it's a nice feat and accomplishment but all the work will unfortunately go to waste.:( well i still hope they get some decent money out of this!
 
How is "OpenClip" not breaking the Apple SDK NDA? I thought developers were not allowed to discuss the SDK. Hmmm... I smell something bad here.
 
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