Talking about cut & paste on the iPhone, I was thinking about how I’d do it.

The main problem is that Apple have already used the obvious gesture for selecting text - “click” and drag-select - to allow you to position the text cursor using a magnifying glass.

This is indeed a useful gesture… when you need it… which is less often than I need cut & paste. However, given that they are unlikely to change the purpose of that gesture, we’re in need of another one.

The best I can think of, currently, is a two finger gesture where one finger remains static, whilst the other one drag selects. The static finger is almost like a depressed modifier key in this situation, and a similar use of it could be made in other contexts.

Currently the gesture I’ve described would be interpreted as the “pinch”, but I think that’s a mistake. I think that the interface should only recognise a pinch when both fingers are moving. This would allow the one-in-motion, one-static gesture to mean something else.

Once text selection is cracked, the rest is relatively simple I think - some sort of contextual interface or halo that presents itself around the selected text, given the normal cut/copy/paste type options.

There are still a few questions - like how do I paste in to an empty selection - but I think that they are easily solved. A paste button on the keyboard would do it.

<p style="font-size:10px;text-align:right;">Tags: iphone, interface, ui</p>