How would you like to see copy/paste work?

Like many of you, one my main problems with my iPhone is the lack of copy/paste ability. I was thinking about this today and realized that implementing this might be a bit more difficult than I first thought. It would seem difficult to find a way to both view the text with "magnifying glass" tool in order to start at the appropriate character as well as begin the actual selection process of the desired text. Not to mention how to decide what to do with said text once it has been highlighted.

Does anyone have any ideas/suggestions about how this might be implemented in future updates? Keystokes, hand-gestures, etc? Just curios what everyone thinks.

the main reason i think we havent seen C/P is because of how the cursor movement works already, to get the cursor in a specific spot, you have to drag it there, just like C/P

i would like to see them place some Left/Right arrows in the keyboard somewhere, and make C/P work like normal. to me thats the most logical course of action. maybe highlight the text, and hold the HOME key?

good stuff

I'm sure Apple-employed software engineers are reading this suggestion and will implement it into the next software update (available for $20).

Here's my idea: holding a touch on the text will bring up the magtool, right? You can then slide back and forth to place your cursor. When you have seen your beginning select point, you'd double-tap and drag (up pops the magtool again to assist) over your text to select your portion. With text selected, pinching in on it "picks it up," or copies it. If you wanted to cut the selected text, you'd pinch up the selection, and then swipe R-to-L over the selection to delete it. Finally, to paste you'd touch and drag to place your cursor (again thanks to magtool), then pinch out (as if dropping it in). Or maybe double-tap the spot, since if you had text copied you wouldn't be able to pinch out to zoom in. I think this is pretty intuitive. What do you think?

Just get the magnifier to the point you want to start and hold your finger there for 2-3 seconds to indicate you want to copy. Then drag your finger to the end point and hold here again to indicate completion of selection. Then the phone asks if you want to copy/cut/cancel. With a copy/cut in memory, go to the paste point and hold again to indicate where to paste. The phone should ask for paste confirmation.

Easy peasy.

I like the ideas. As I think about it more, I wonder if it might work to use the magtool to place the cursor where you need and then hold the home button to begin the highlighting process. The only problem I can think of with this is that it would require two hands to do. Love the ideas everyone, keep 'em coming!

fleurya said:

Just get the magnifier to the point you want to start and hold your finger there for 2-3 seconds to indicate you want to copy. Then drag your finger to the end point and hold here again to indicate completion of selection. Then the phone asks if you want to copy/cut/cancel. With a copy/cut in memory, go to the paste point and hold again to indicate where to paste. The phone should ask for paste confirmation.

Easy peasy.

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This is my favorite suggestion so far. It's simple and seems like it would be relatively easy for the engineers to acomplish. Good job!

Thanks!

There is a mockup video out there where somebody demonstrated something somewhat similar to what fleurya described. It looks like it would work really well.

Here is a link to that video, I'd love to get my hands on that code for my own iphone! Thanks for the info Kash

EDIT: on second thought, I suppose that could be some form of CGI rendering used in that video

NolaWegs said:

Here is a link to that video, I'd love to get my hands on that code for my own iphone! Thanks for the info Kash

EDIT: on second thought, I suppose that could be some form of CGI rendering used in that video

Click to expand...

I like that second finger tap method better than mine since it it would be a little faster. You would just have to dextrous enough not to move the position of your first finger while tapping with the other.

BTW, the video was faked. The guy even said "a faked demo" towards the end. I don't know why he did the things with his mouth over the guy in the other demo videos. That was just creepy! Especially when he said "I love you" as the end. Scary!

(snip) Misread original post - sorry