Disagree highly, the x11 select/middle click paste is the best way to copy/paste by far. To the point I start to get visibly upset when trying to copy and paste on windows. you would think ctrl+c ctrl+v is easy and simple, but it is infuriatingly slow compared to the x11 method.
To really throw gasoline on the mental fire, middle click on window usually puts you in some sort of stupid alternate scroll mode.
I don't like the select = copy idea. When I browsing, I'd like to select a few words for no reason (well, more like a hight light, or reminds me to focus on them). I just want to select it, not copy them at all. And mid click paste? Little hard to control somehow: looks the mouse easily move a little when I do so.
I'm also a compulsive highlighter, but fortunately x11 has distinct concepts between "primary selection" and "clipboard"
middle click is "query for the most recently selected thing and paste" while the clipboard requires an explicit copy action. In vim (even terminal vim) with X support they are the '"' (double quote) and '+' (plus sign) registers respectively. Most other applications let you copy and paste with CUA (or for terminals shift-modified CUA) keybindings.
So for something I plan on pasting longer term (or multiple times) I will typically use the clipboard. For quick "this thing needs to go here" with the mouse I use the primary selection.
I also agree that middle-click is nearly useless on a scrollwheel. Many mice have more than two buttons these days so you can always remap a function button though (as I mention in another thread, my trackball actually has 3 legit full-size top buttons, but prior to that I remapped the "browser forward" button to be middle).
I find I only use SELECTION if I'm going to paste whatever I copied immediately, but in those situations I do think it's a bit faster. If need to do anything else between copying and pasting I'll use CLIPBOARD instead.
I think this is the key insight. The old way makes selection a first class citizen of the windowing environment. If you view it not as copying, but taking advantage of the last selection, it makes a whole lot more sense.
This is not to say that explicit actions on the clipboard aren't useful. But, as an emacs user, I'm used to way more control over the kill ring than I typically see exercised on the clipboard.
For me it usually goes, select some text, try and paste, get a stupid scroll mode, try ctrl+v don't get what I want, go back to original document, select the text agian try and paste...
Eventually I remember to ctrl+c but it just flows so well, select then paste that it feels like a real step backwards going to a system that does not have it.
I do agree that the middle mouse button should be divorced from the scroll wheel.
I use the elecom EX-G trackball[1] for this reason. The default button mapping is middle-click on the scroll-wheel but it has 3 full-sized buttons on top as well and remapping is easy. There's nothing worse than middle-clicking to paste and having the scroll wheel scroll the screen slightly.
I prefer to just use a normal mice (In fact mine is not that normal because it is vertical). I'm on macOS and why bother to shop an old school one for rare usage? That's why I prefer the context menu too.
Sharing middle click between paste functionality and it's other popular functions makes it error prone and impractical at least for me. Copy paste is faster in a vacuum but the overall experience is worse. I think using thumb mouse buttons is more practical, and auto copy is better just avoided altogether.
Maybe that's why the "Un*x dogmatists" avoid adding functionality to mouse buttons. Middle click already has a great X11/Wayland feature and should stay that way.
I may have something on my clipboard already. I "compulsively" highlight things as a reading aid and it's frustrating when I lose trust in my clipboard because it always contains fragments of text I don't care about.
I'm somewhat sympathetic, but I'm not sure that "I want to be able to give the machine input without it reacting" is a great objection to doing something with that input.
> middle click on window usually puts you in some sort of stupid alternate scroll mode
It's just badly implemented there. Internet Explorer had a completely brain-dead implementation, and every embedded webview inherited that.
Firefox always had a very nice implementation of middle-click scroll. It may sound silly, but this one of the major reasons I always hated chromium-based browsers — they do have it, but it's not nearly as nice (you can't, or at least couldn't easily scroll inside scrollable elements, the acceleration profile feels very weird, and other small things like that).
I disagree when a trackpad enters the mix, because there are no clearly defined tap areas. I often copy a url, click in the navbar to select the current url, and paste in the copied url — and nothing happens! That's because I unintentionally middle-clicked the navbar, clobbering the clipboard with its contents.
Why? You can tap with three fingers for the middle click. It may not be the default, though. Even my ancient HP ProBook's abysmal touchpda supports this.
If you like tapping, one finger, two finger, and three finger taps seem pretty much equivalent. If you like buttons, clicking the left button, right button, or both buttons together seems about equivalent. What's awkward about any of this?
I can't remember the last time I had a mouse where middle-click wasn't really awkward to use. Probably in the time before scroll-wheels, when there was an actual middle button that was just a button.
Trying to click the mouse scroll-wheel is on par with the "push the joystick straight down" click mode that some modern game controllers have in awfulness.
I swear by the Logitech MX Anywhere 2. So much so that I recently hacked in usb-c support to my ancient ones.
It has a scroll wheel, which if you press down toggles between free-wheeling and line-by-line scrolling. It also has a physical middle mouse button just below the scroll wheel.
Originally in the 1990s when there were 3-button mice without scrollwheels, especially on Sparcs and whatnot, middle clicks were good.
But then mice standardised on scrollwheels and the middle button being the depression of the scrollwheel - and it's not so good anymore. It's way too easy to accidentally scroll when clicking a mouse wheel, and few people would disable the scroll wheel or get 90's type straight 3 button mouse.
The middle click in windows for "scroll mode" (or something) as you say, is useless. And I can only assume that's a mode that exists precisely because people without scrollwheels still need to scroll so it emulates the wheel. Poorly.
FWIW I agree when it comes to copy/paste, because there select/middle click is established. The context menu comes in handy for those operations that are just used seldom enough that you don't want to waste a single click on them, but often enough that you'd like to have an easy way to use it. For me these are mainly stuff like calling occur on a word, jumping to a reference, opening a dictionary definition, etc.
To really throw gasoline on the mental fire, middle click on window usually puts you in some sort of stupid alternate scroll mode.