Re: [clipboard] Semi-Trusted Events Alternative

> > If this is really the case, it seems that separating Copy from Paste
would be proper.
>
> The spec sort of distinguishes them (but this should probably be spelled
out in detail): per the current spec text, copy/cut can be triggered from
any trusted or semi-trusted event, while paste is only allowed if the UA is
explicitly configured to allow it. But I should explain this better in the
spec - especially because I keep forgetting about this myself ;)

I very much agree: it seems like much of the discussion slowing down
progress on this spec and subsequent implementations is a concern over
unauthorized programmatic access to read the user's clipboard (i.e.
synthetic `paste`) but that is NOT part of the spec, nor would I want it to
be.

That functionality is also NOT supported in Flash: you can still only read
the clipboard contents while handling a user-initiated `paste` operation
into a Flash UI component.

The main desired functionality that is really driving this spec is the
synthetic/programmatic `copy` operation. Looking at ZeroClipboard's [1][2]
usage statistics provides plenty of evidence that this feature is both
increasingly desired by developers [3][4][5] and frequently used by
consumers [6].

[1]: ZeroClipboard home page: http://zeroclipboard.org/

[2]: ZeroClipboard repo: https://github.com/zeroclipboard/zeroclipboard/

[3]: Public websites using ZeroClipboard number well over 30,000:
https://github.com/zeroclipboard/zeroclipboard/wiki#websites-using-zeroclipboard

[4]: ZeroClipboard currently has 3000+ stars on GitHub.

[5]: ZeroClipboard averages more than 1000 installs per week via NPM, which
is only one of many ways/systems by which developers can get ZeroClipboard:
https://www.npmjs.org/package/zeroclipboard

[6]: GitHub usage statistics (as of March 2014) for the ZeroClipboard
click-to-copy buttons indicate an average of 35,000+ clicks per day.

Sincerely,
   James M. Greene
   http://greene.io/