Open Clip hopes to bring cross-application copy/paste functionality to iPhone

Copy, paste. Copy, paste. It seems like such a simple and convenient feature to have on a smartphone, it’s a wonder why Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) has taken so long to enable the cut-and-paste feature on the iPhone and iPhone 3G. iPhone and iPhone 3G users have been clamoring for a working cut/paste solution for their iPhone handset, prompting Apple to confirm that they’re working on cut-and-paste functionality for the iPhone - albeit, as a fairly low development-priority.

There have been efforts by other iPhone developers to introduce crude copy/paste functionality to the iPhone, but these previous solutions have been severely limited. The feature was limited to within a single application or only worked between a pair of applications. Today, we’re hearing that iPhone developer Zac White has gone live with his Open Clip initiative to bring cross-application cut-n-paste functionality to the iPhone.

Open Clip is an open-source initiative that hopes to integrate its cut/paste-enabling code in to various third-party applications. Open Clip isn’t a stand-alone application. Think of Open Clip as a standardized technology that developers can incorporate in to their applications. There aren’t any Open Clip-compatible applications available yet, but we’re told that they’re coming.

Third-party applications with Open Clip support will be able to pass cut-and-paste material between eachother. Unfortunately, the cut/paste feature will be limited to Open Clip-compatible applications.

White asserts that his Open Clip project is intended as a stop-gap solution until Apple releases their official iPhone cut/paste feature through a future iPhone OS update. He hopes that the Open Clip project will provide a “working case study” to help Apple in developing their own, native iPhone cut & paste solution.

With some luck, we’ll see applications getting jiggy with cut and paste shortly.
[Via: iPhone Atlas]