Remember Open Clip’s Copy & Paste framework I
mentioned the other day? Well, it’s already broken. Yep, you read that right. Broken. The beta version of the iPhone’s next firmware (2.1b4) was released to developers around the same time that Open Clip’s framework was getting talked up on the internets, and it turns out that the “community space” that Open Clip was relying on to be the holding place for copied information to be accessed between applications will be closed off. According to an
update posted on Open Clip’s website , copy and paste within a single application using Open Clip’s framework will still be possible in 2.1, but copy and paste will no longer work between different applications.
Open Clip’s developer, Zac White, does not think that this was an intentional move by Apple, but just normal tightening-up on their part of the firmware that was probably in the works for a while. We can still hope that Apple will eventually implement copy and paste between applications in the future - it has been mentioned that this is on their radar, but just not very high on the priority list. Or that a developer will again find a way to make this work that will “stick” despite future firmware updates. I don’t know about you, but I am dying for a way to copy and paste the log-in information for that terrible viewmymessage.com site that AT&T so kindly sends vis SMS to remind me of the fact that I can’t view MMS messages on my iPhone when my friends forget that I can’t get those kinds of messages. Who’s with me?
If you're one of the iPhone users who has been waiting for copy and paste (like me!) your wait for this key feature might be getting shorter. A software developer has put together a framework that all iPhone app developers can use to allow copy and paste to work between different applications.
The trouble in implementing copy and paste on the iPhone to date has been the restrictions put in place by Apple: apps are not allowed to write data to other apps. So if you do copy information in one app, it is not allowed to put this data anywhere outside of its own framework. Also, since apps cannot run in the background, anything copied in an app closes down along with the app when you leave it.
Enter OpenClip, a not-for-profit open-source project that is building a framework that will allow apps by participating developers to copy and paste information between them. Zac White is the developer who created the framework to make this happen. In this framework, apps will use space in the iPhone's system that is open and available to all apps to store copied information. Other apps built using this framework can then access this "community" space and pull out the copied information for pasting or further manipulation.
OpenClip states that this framework does not violate Apple's SDK in any way. And the more apps that participate and use the framework, the ability to copy and paste on the iPhone will become a true feature. It's unknown what Apple will do with this framework and if it will be implemented in the core iPhone apps like Safari, Contacts, Notes, and others. But we can hope that this framework will be a way for Apple to implement copy and paste in the apps where it's most needed!
See more at
OpenClip's site .
Via [
MacRumors ]
