Re: --without-toolkit-scroll-bars at runtime?

[Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>]

> how difficult would it be to make "--without-toolkit-scroll-bars" a
> runtime instead of or in addition to being a compile-time option?

I had started to look into it at some point.  It's probably not too
difficult, but still a fair bit of work.  Doesn't look like it's worth
the trouble.

A more interesting direction (to me anyway) would be to change the
toolkit's behavior.  Xaw3d (by default) behaves just liek Xaw so you get the
3d look while keeping the flexibility.  Sadly RedHat's Xaw3d is not using
the default, instead it's compiled with -DARROW_SCROLLBAR to get the dumber
behavior (and little arrows at the end), I can't remember what Debian does.
It wouldn't be too hard to make the Xaw3d behavior changeable at runtime
with Xresoucres.  Hopefully someone will make that change.

Similarly, it would be good to provide a Gtk "theme" that gives Xaw-like
behavior (or some other: there used to be a variety of useful behaviors in
various scrollbars, such as the one used in the Smalltalk machine, ...).
But I doubt it can currently be done with just a theme.

> forward motion without moving the mouse, you can't control the scroll
> amount to get just the right window start for getting a
> block/function/loop fully on-screen.  Something which, by the way, is
> also hard to do by keyboard given Emacs' recenter policies.

I use C-0 C-l and it's worked fine so far.  But I admit I've never tried it
with images in the buffer.  In any case, it *should* work, so if it doesn't
we should try and fix it.


        Stefan