request for custom clipboard types (Re: clipboard events)

On Mon, 31 Jan 2011 20:25:20 +0900, Paul Libbrecht <paul@activemath.org>  
wrote:

>> there should be some agreement on what MIME types ought to be supported

> Some types will be predefined but the door should stay opened for others.

I think what you are asking implies that the UA should "get out of the  
way" and just pass the arbitrary string the script gives it to the OS.

Then you risk that script authors need to
a) start writing platform-detection and OS-specific code
b) be forced to handle cases like a Windows OS whose list of possible  
clipboard types is full

I think in particular a) is a very bad consequence. Browser sniffing is an  
awful failure, holding the web back, preventing compatibility and  
competition. We should certainly avoid specifying something that will be  
even worse if we can. (I see scripts detecting Windows and Macs only and  
not fall back to anything but broken clipboard support for other platforms  
if we go down this route).

> A website maker for, say, a shop for furnitures that knows they can go  
> into "my home plan maker" through the clipboard will want to be able to  
> produce and export a clipboard flavor that is unknown to both browser  
> implementors and spec makers now.
> Provided the user may say that the format is "safe" (safe as a picture  
> for example), he would be able to drag-and-drop the furniture and get a  
> 3D view inside "my home plan maker".

I can see there are some really nice and tempting use cases. The problem  
is the serious downsides.. I would however assume that if we support  
placing a main XML (or JSON) payload plus alternate- or sub-parts on the  
clipboard, many custom formats and applications would be able to do their  
custom business in XML or JSON plus binary blobs. What do you think?

-- 
Hallvord R. M. Steen, Core Tester, Opera Software
http://www.opera.com http://my.opera.com/hallvors/

Received on Tuesday, 17 May 2011 04:35:24 UTC