Suggestion for Xorg / about middle-mouse click pasting

[Elie Goldman Smith]

X.Org, to whom it may concern:

I'm writing to suggest that Xorg's middle-mouse pasting should be an
optional feature, not an unchangeable behavior.

The rationale is simple:
Middle-mouse pasting is only beneficial to users who know that it exists.
For everyone else, it's a liability.

Say for example a user is writing a document, scrolling through it,
and accidentally pastes text without knowing it.
The pasted text might contain sensitive/private information.
The user submits the document somewhere, and people read it.
It's more likely than you think.

This isn't simply a matter of mouse scroll wheels that click too
easily. Laptop touchpads are known to paste accidentally too. Even
2-button emulation is a liability, if the user doesn't remember to
deliberately avoid pressing both buttons at once.


Solution:
Middle-mouse pasting would be great as a setting that can be
enabled/disabled by 'xset' on the command line.

Please let me know if this would be simple to implement.


Thanks
- Elie


P.S.
Current workarounds involve either:
- completely disabling the middle mouse button
- blocking the feature in specific apps only
- scripts that continuously delete Xorg's clipboard every half-second

We can do better.

P.P.S.
I would bet that desktop linux distros would disable middle-mouse
pasting by default, if they could.
Many users are new to Linux, and are used to absent-mindedly clicking
the scroll wheel while scrolling.
Hardcore coders can always re-enable the feature via 'xset'.
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