Labs/Jetpack/JEP/10

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JEP 10 - Clipboard Support

• Author: Aza Raskin <aza at mozilla dot com>
• Champion: Aza Raskin <aza at mozilla dot com>
• Status: Draft
• Type: API Track
• Created: 26 May 2009

Introduction and Rationale

This JEP describes OS clipboard access to the Jetpack API.

A number of Jetpacks have already implemented their own versions of clipboard access. It makes sense to unify the API and allow for a clean way for Jetpacks to get and set the clipboard in a variety of formats.

As part of this proposal is adding a jetpack.os namespace.

Proposal

Clipboard access will live at jetpack.os.clipboard. The jetpack.os will provide access to anything that relates to the OS (file access, OS info, etc.)

Setting the clipboard

jetpack.os.clipboard.set( data, [dataType] )

The data paramater can be anything, a string, a unicode string, a number, an image, and HTML fragment, etc. that you want to place in the system clipboard.

The optional dataType let's Jetpack know what kind of data is being passed in, in mime-type format. For example, a unicode string would take "text/unicode", HTML would be "text/html", and an PNG would be "image/png". If dataType isn't passed in, Jetpack makes its best guess.

An example of setting the clipboard in action is as follows:

var words = "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.";
jetpack.os.clipboard.set( words );

var html = "<div>Hello <i>there!</i></div>";
jetpack.os.clipboard.set( html, "text/html" );

Getting the clipboard

var value = jetpack.os.clipboard.get()