I've been asked to create a feature on a website that allows thier
users to simply cut and paste an image from the clipboard to the
website and then upload the file to the server.  They have shown me
something on another website but I can not seem to find any record if
it's a public program they bought or if it was custom programmed.

The need is as follows:
The ability of the person to "Copy" an image or text or "screen print"
to a section of the page.
Finish a form and then submit the form
The Image is then able to be saved to a file on the system.

Bonus:
Able to save to a Unix System

Super Bonus:
Able to interact via perl

I hope someone can prove me wrong, but you will not be able to
accomplish pasting an image into a form in a browser using only
JavaScript and DHTML.  A user can paste text from the clipboard into a
number of form controls, but not images.  The closest you can get to
this with only JavaScript and DHTML is:

1) direct the user save the image or screen-print to a file
2) open a file explorer for the user so the user can select the file
3) display a preview of the image on the webpage before submitting (optional)
4) submit the file to your web application

Saving and manipulating the file on your server once the webpage has
posted it is possible, but the specifics will depend on what web
server platform/language you are using. (PHP, ASP, ASP.Net, Cold
Fusion, etc.)  I'm guessing from your question you are using Perl on
Unix.  Is this right?

If you want to automate the client-side portions of this process so it
is simpler for the user, it will require client-side software.  You
could implement this as a stand alone application, browser plug-in, or
using other methods.  You might be able to find a way to get the Flash
plugin to do this with some fancy ActionScript, which would be nice
since it is probably already on your client workstations.  I've done
some ActionScript programming and would guess that this will be a
dead-end too, but cannot say for sure.  Even so, you'd have to write a
custom web server application for Flash to transmit the image to.

Let me know if you need sample HTML/JavaScript for the steps I outlined above.

As far as I can tell, it would be a Java or ActiveX plug in.  I know
they had to install a special control but that is it...

Okay, so we've established that you're going to need a plugin or
client software of some sort.  The next question is what runtime
software platform will be consistently available on the client
workstations.  I take it that the client workstations will all be
running Windows.  If you need this to run on both Navigator and IE, I
think you'll have to use a Java applet and harness the JRE.  Java is
not a specialty of mine, but you could possibly start with some code
like this:

[ http://www.devx.com/Java/Article/22326/0/page/5 ]

If you want to use a Microsoft development tool, then determine if the
.Net framework will be on all of the client workstations.  If so, then
you can use C# or VB.Net to write the plugin.  If not, then your
choices for development are VB and VC++.  If you are confident that
users have recent versions of Windows (and will therefore have VB
runtime available) you can write the control using VB.  If not, then
you'll need to write the control with VC++.  There will be some
additional steps to ready the control for deployment, including
signing the code and packaging it into a .cab file.

I've made a few plugins for the IE browser using VB and VC++ ATL so I
can give you some additional guidance along those lines if you'd like.

Your final alternative is to write a completely stand-alone
application using any software that the client workstations can
support.  The drawback is that you'll have to come up with your own
deployment solution but the advantage is that you could automate the
enitire process, including taking the screen snapshot and posting the
image to your server.

Right now I'm leaning towards ActiveX.  All machines run Windows and
IE. The site currently is compatible with IE and Netscape, but the
netscape compatiblities a personal my goal, not the companies.

99.9% of the site is currently running Redhat Enterprise, with Apache and perl code.