webkit css3 Column text selection

Question

Iam using the column layout model of css3 to view content in a UIWebView (iPhone/iPad), I would like to programmatically select and copy the content of each column and paste it in another view, is there way to achieve this?

Answer 1

I'm pretty sure this is not currently possible. CSS3 paged media selectors when they're implemented will enable page selection when you're using a box layout, this will then have to be extended to column selection. For now, you're SOL. But if you only care about iPad, and you have a box layout and know your font, font size, leading and kernings, you could try to calculate where the column breaks are in Javascript - but this is a large undertaking.