TUTORIAL and scroll bar

TUTORIAL and scroll bar

[Richard Stallman]

The tutorial says the scroll bar is on the left.
Is that true (by default) on all systems?

Re: TUTORIAL and scroll bar

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>
> Date: Tue, 08 Aug 2006 19:39:44 -0400
> 
> The tutorial says the scroll bar is on the left.
> Is that true (by default) on all systems?

No.  frame.c initializes the default scroll bar position as follows:

      DEFVAR_LISP ("default-frame-scroll-bars", &Vdefault_frame_scroll_bars,
		   doc: /* Default position of scroll bars on this window-system.  */);
    #ifdef HAVE_WINDOW_SYSTEM
    #if defined(HAVE_NTGUI) || defined(MAC_OS)
      /* MS-Windows has scroll bars on the right by default.  */
      Vdefault_frame_scroll_bars = Qright;
    #else
      Vdefault_frame_scroll_bars = Qleft;
    #endif
    #else
      Vdefault_frame_scroll_bars = Qnil;
    #endif

I guess this is done to be consistent with the defaults of the
respective window-system.

Re: TUTORIAL and scroll bar

[Chong Yidong]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

>     #ifdef HAVE_WINDOW_SYSTEM
>     #if defined(HAVE_NTGUI) || defined(MAC_OS)
>       /* MS-Windows has scroll bars on the right by default.  */
>       Vdefault_frame_scroll_bars = Qright;
>     #else
>       Vdefault_frame_scroll_bars = Qleft;
>     #endif
>     #else
>       Vdefault_frame_scroll_bars = Qnil;
>     #endif
>
> I guess this is done to be consistent with the defaults of the
> respective window-system.

If that's the rationale, I suggest moving scroll bars to the right on
GTK as well.

Re: TUTORIAL and scroll bar

[Romain Francoise]

Chong Yidong <cyd@stupidchicken.com> writes:

> If that's the rationale, I suggest moving scroll bars to the right on
> GTK as well.

http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2005-08/msg00667.html
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2005-08/msg00707.html

-- 
Romain Francoise <romain@orebokech.com> | The sea! the sea! the open
it's a miracle -- http://orebokech.com/ | sea! The blue, the fresh, the
                                        | ever free! --Bryan W. Procter

Re: TUTORIAL and scroll bar

[David Kastrup]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

>> From: Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>
>> Date: Tue, 08 Aug 2006 19:39:44 -0400
>> 
>> The tutorial says the scroll bar is on the left.
>> Is that true (by default) on all systems?
>
> No.  frame.c initializes the default scroll bar position as follows:
>
>       DEFVAR_LISP ("default-frame-scroll-bars", &Vdefault_frame_scroll_bars,
> 		   doc: /* Default position of scroll bars on this window-system.  */);
>     #ifdef HAVE_WINDOW_SYSTEM
>     #if defined(HAVE_NTGUI) || defined(MAC_OS)
>       /* MS-Windows has scroll bars on the right by default.  */
>       Vdefault_frame_scroll_bars = Qright;
>     #else
>       Vdefault_frame_scroll_bars = Qleft;
>     #endif
>     #else
>       Vdefault_frame_scroll_bars = Qnil;
>     #endif
>
> I guess this is done to be consistent with the defaults of the
> respective window-system.

I find this strange: after all, the usual setting for almost all
applications (including those on X) is on the right, so the case for
Windows does not seem to be different here.

One exception seems to be xdvi, but that seems to be the only one.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum

Re: TUTORIAL and scroll bar

[Miles Bader]

David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org> writes:
> I find this strange: after all, the usual setting for almost all
> applications (including those on X) is on the right, so the case for
> Windows does not seem to be different here.

A lot of "traditional" applications (e.g. xterm, xedit) use left-side
scroll-bars by default (not arbitrarily -- there's some thinking as to
why left-side scrollbars are better); more recent ones seem to often use
right-side sbs, probably because of the mac/windows influence.

-Miles

-- 
Saa, shall we dance?  (from a dance-class advertisement)

Re: TUTORIAL and scroll bar

[David Kastrup]

Miles Bader <miles.bader@necel.com> writes:

> David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org> writes:
>> I find this strange: after all, the usual setting for almost all
>> applications (including those on X) is on the right, so the case for
>> Windows does not seem to be different here.
>
> A lot of "traditional" applications (e.g. xterm, xedit) use left-side
> scroll-bars by default (not arbitrarily -- there's some thinking as to
> why left-side scrollbars are better); more recent ones seem to often use
> right-side sbs, probably because of the mac/windows influence.

Ok, I was not aware that we had a few traditional apps approaching
this from the left, too.  I like the left better, anyway, and would
likely reconfigure Emacs if I had to use Windows.

If we had well-working customization themes, this is one example where
a "Windows standard" theme as opposed to an "Emacs standard" theme
could be used to cater for this.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum

Re: TUTORIAL and scroll bar

[Yavor Doganov]

On Wed, 09 Aug 2006 09:14:44 +0200, David Kastrup wrote:

> Ok, I was not aware that we had a few traditional apps approaching
> this from the left, too.

FYI all GNUstep applications have scroll bars on the left side.  I'm
using emacs-snapshot under GNUstep with GNU/Linux, so the current
state matches my environment.

Of course, if you decide to change the GTK flavor to be on the right
side for consistency with GNOME, that would be OK, but I'd like it to
be customizable, if possible.

-- 
JID: doganov@jabber.minus273.org

Re: TUTORIAL and scroll bar

[Richard Stallman]

I changed the tutorial just to say "at the side", without saying left
or right.  Could you write to the maintainers of the translations and
ask them to update this?

Re: TUTORIAL and scroll bar

[Richard Stallman]

    > I guess this is done to be consistent with the defaults of the
    > respective window-system.

    If that's the rationale, I suggest moving scroll bars to the right on
    GTK as well.

The main reason for putting scroll bars on the left is that most of the text
is on the left.  In ordinary X11 toolkit scroll bars, there are mouse
clicks whose operation is based on the line you click on, so it is useful
to see the scroll bar close to the text on the line.

However, the scroll bar commands on Windows and the Mac don't work
that way, and it is not particularly useful for those scroll bars to
be on the left.  So they may as well go on the right, where people
usually expect them.

I am not sure what the scroll bar commands in the GTK version do.
If they work like those of Windows, then those scroll bars may as
well be on the right.

Re: TUTORIAL and scroll bar

[Richard Stallman]

    Of course, if you decide to change the GTK flavor to be on the right
    side for consistency with GNOME, that would be OK, but I'd like it to
    be customizable, if possible.

It will still be customizable; we won't remove that mechanism.

Re: TUTORIAL and scroll bar

[Jan Djärv]

Richard Stallman skrev:
>     > I guess this is done to be consistent with the defaults of the
>     > respective window-system.
> 
>     If that's the rationale, I suggest moving scroll bars to the right on
>     GTK as well.
> 
> The main reason for putting scroll bars on the left is that most of the text
> is on the left.  In ordinary X11 toolkit scroll bars, there are mouse
> clicks whose operation is based on the line you click on, so it is useful
> to see the scroll bar close to the text on the line.
> 
> However, the scroll bar commands on Windows and the Mac don't work
> that way, and it is not particularly useful for those scroll bars to
> be on the left.  So they may as well go on the right, where people
> usually expect them.
> 
> I am not sure what the scroll bar commands in the GTK version do.
> If they work like those of Windows, then those scroll bars may as
> well be on the right.

I am not sure which commands you mean. Dou you mean that middle click on the 
bar jumps the slider there?  GTK has that.

	Jan D.

Re: TUTORIAL and scroll bar

[Miles Bader]

Jan Djärv <jan.h.d@swipnet.se> writes:
>> The main reason for putting scroll bars on the left is that most of the text
>> is on the left.  In ordinary X11 toolkit scroll bars, there are mouse
>> clicks whose operation is based on the line you click on, so it is useful
>> to see the scroll bar close to the text on the line.
>
> I am not sure which commands you mean. Dou you mean that middle click on the 
> bar jumps the slider there?  GTK has that.

Xtk (and ATK for that matter) scrollbars use a very clever and handy
definition for the left/right mouse keys:  a left mouse-click in the
scrollbar scrolls so that the line next to the mouse pointer is at to
the top of the window; a right mouse-click scrolls so that the line at
the top of the window is next to the mouse-pointer.

Thus you can intuitively and precisely control the amount by which the
window scrolls due to mouse l/r scrollbar clicks (near the top of the
bar = "scroll a little", near the bottom = "scroll a lot").

[In ATK, it would even auto-repeat if you held down the mouse button, so
you could dynamically control the speed of scrolling by moving the
pointer up or down in the scrollbar while holding down the
mouse-button.  Xterm, at least, doesn't seem to implement this.]

-Miles
-- 
My spirit felt washed.  With blood.  [Eli Shin, on "The Passion of the Christ"]

Re: TUTORIAL and scroll bar

[David Kastrup]

Jan Djärv <jan.h.d@swipnet.se> writes:

> Richard Stallman skrev:
>>     > I guess this is done to be consistent with the defaults of the
>>     > respective window-system.
>>
>>     If that's the rationale, I suggest moving scroll bars to the right on
>>     GTK as well.
>>
>> The main reason for putting scroll bars on the left is that most of the text
>> is on the left.  In ordinary X11 toolkit scroll bars, there are mouse
>> clicks whose operation is based on the line you click on, so it is useful
>> to see the scroll bar close to the text on the line.
>>
>> However, the scroll bar commands on Windows and the Mac don't work
>> that way, and it is not particularly useful for those scroll bars to
>> be on the left.  So they may as well go on the right, where people
>> usually expect them.
>>
>> I am not sure what the scroll bar commands in the GTK version do.
>> If they work like those of Windows, then those scroll bars may as
>> well be on the right.
>
> I am not sure which commands you mean. Dou you mean that middle click
> on the bar jumps the slider there?  GTK has that.

No, that is not related to the screen content.  In Athena widgets (and
Emacs' native scrollbars), clicking with the left mouse button will
move the line where you click to the top of the screen, clicking with
the right mouse button will move the top of the screen to where you
clicked.

That is: you can control the size of the movement, you can change the
direction of the movement using equal distances without changing mouse
position, and clicking in the same place will continue to work in
either direction until you reach the end of buffer.  The click action
is independent of the current slider position.

Windows, Mac and GTK scroll bars are _much_ less useful and can't be
configured to be better.  Which is why I always compile Emacs with

--with-gtk --without-tool-kit-scrollbars

GTK is nice, but its scroll bars suck as badly as almost anybody
else's.  Some years ago I asked on the GTK+ developer list whether
they would be thinking of some option to put into .gtkrc-2.0 to fix
that for people who could live without the dumbed-down bars of GTK+,
but nobody was particularly interested in taking that up.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum

Re: TUTORIAL and scroll bar

[Jan Djärv]

Miles Bader skrev:

> Xtk (and ATK for that matter) scrollbars use a very clever and handy
> definition for the left/right mouse keys:  a left mouse-click in the
> scrollbar scrolls so that the line next to the mouse pointer is at to
> the top of the window; a right mouse-click scrolls so that the line at
> the top of the window is next to the mouse-pointer.
> 
> Thus you can intuitively and precisely control the amount by which the
> window scrolls due to mouse l/r scrollbar clicks (near the top of the
> bar = "scroll a little", near the bottom = "scroll a lot").

Ok, but should we move Motif scroll bars to the right also then?  They don't 
behave like that either.

David Kastrup skrev:

 > GTK is nice, but its scroll bars suck as badly as almost anybody
 > else's.  Some years ago I asked on the GTK+ developer list whether
 > they would be thinking of some option to put into .gtkrc-2.0 to fix
 > that for people who could live without the dumbed-down bars of GTK+,
 > but nobody was particularly interested in taking that up.
 >

They seem to be content with the current behaviour.  You can't even remap 
buttons, they are hardcoded in the C-code.

	Jan D.

Re: TUTORIAL and scroll bar

[David Kastrup]

Jan Djärv <jan.h.d@swipnet.se> writes:

> David Kastrup skrev:
>
>> GTK is nice, but its scroll bars suck as badly as almost anybody
>> else's.  Some years ago I asked on the GTK+ developer list whether
>> they would be thinking of some option to put into .gtkrc-2.0 to fix
>> that for people who could live without the dumbed-down bars of
>> GTK+, but nobody was particularly interested in taking that up.
>>
>
> They seem to be content with the current behaviour.

I was not asking them to change the default.  I was asking for a way
to change this as a user setting, in a similar manner as one can
configure the text boxes of GTK+ to listen to Emacs-style control
sequences, by placing

gtk-key-theme-name = "Emacs"

into one's ~/.gtkrc-2.0 file.

> You can't even remap buttons, they are hardcoded in the C-code.

Yes, and it would really make much more sense to have a way to change
_all_ GTK scrollbars by a user option rather than being able to change
that on a per-application basis.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum