Re: Gtk scrollbar: thumb too short

[Luc Teirlinck <teirllm@dms.auburn.edu>]

Jody Goldberg wrote:

   Gnumeric has received alot of bug reports on this score.  Some
   people like the thumb to indicate the visible rows, others want it
   to display the visible region.  We have received complaints both
   ways.  My preference is for the visible region to provide some
   feedback that there is hidden content.

Both the native scrollbar and the default (no options to configure)
Xaw3d scroll bars seem to display the "visible region" (if I
understand correctly) and do so, in my judgment, in an accurate way.
One can have all kinds of opinions about other behavior being or not
being preferable, but I would not use the term "whacky" for the
present behavior.

Owen Taylor wrote:

   (Presumably, if you have a large chunks of hidden text anywhere in
   your document, the scrollbar will go whacky.)

Is this a more than a mere "presumption"?

and:

   By "go whacky", I didn't mean the problem with dragging off the
   end, but simply that a character-based scrollbar is going to
   inherently act in a confusing matter, especially in the
   presence of invisible text.

Maybe it "theoretically ought to" inherently act in a confusing
matter, but somehow I do not see it actually happen.  (Except for the
thumb size problem, which does not occur for the native scrollbar.)
Of course, as is clear from Jody's message, one person's "expected
behavior" is going to be another person's confusion and vice versa.

Sincerely,

Luc.