[Edward Kirk]

We've been waiting for copy and paste on the iPhone for a long, long time, but despite our pleas, Apple still says that it's not at the top of their list of priorities. In the meantime, a very creative college student by the name of Zak White has created his own alternative that looks to be the first viable copy/paste solution between multiple apps that doesn't interfere with Apple's SDK.

The problem with the SDK is that it doesn't allow for processes for things like copy and paste to run in the background while another application is in use.

Proximi was the first to show how copy and paste might work in an app with their rich text editor MagicPad, but because of the restriction in the SDK, it was limited to working only within MagicPad itself.

Zak's solution is OpenClip, a free open source framework that app developers can integrate into their apps to let them integrate copy and paste between other applications. It's still not quite a replacement for system-wide copy and paste, but it's pretty close. The only limitation is that in order to work, the app has to have OpenClip built into it. So far, supported apps are Twittelator, MagicPad, and Wordpress, with Dial Zero, Cocktails, and Ultralingua having pledged to support it in the future.

Cali Lewis talked about OpenClip in her latest episode of Geek Brief, in which she demonstrates copy and paste using unreleased versions of Twittelator, Wordpress, and MagicPad:


Cut and Paste for iPhone from Cali Lewis on Vimeo.

She also talked about OpenClip in an interview with Zak White in an audio interview.

Developers interested in integrating OpenClip into their apps can get more information at OpenClip.org.

[via Geek Brief]

Where can I get the copy/paste application?