Those horrid alt-buffer init and exit strings in terminfo and termcap are the bane of my existence. I almost never want that behavior, particularly when I've got a relevant section of a man page on the screen and want it to STAY THERE when I quit out of the pager. I use -X in less, but I really want a more universal solution, so I use a terminal type that doesn't have those strings, usually xterm-noapp. But it's not always available.

I'm not sure what you mean about -X and mouse scrolling.