Default mouse wheel scrolling is jumpy

Default mouse wheel scrolling is jumpy

[Simen Heggestøyl]

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Hi. I find the default value of `mouse-wheel-scroll-amount'
mysterious. Jumping 5 lines at the time per scroll event (plus more
when `mouse-wheel-progressive-speed' is enabled, which it is by
default) makes the scrolling feel very "nervous". It's also hard for
the eyes to follow the text when it makes such big jumps.

It's especially bad in the cases where it's hard to control each
scroll event, such as with laptop touchpads or with ThinkPad-style
trackpoints. Then I find the default scrolling mechanism next to
unusable.

Does anyone else feel the same way? If more people agree with this, I
propose setting the default scroll amount to 2, or maybe even 1. I
also find that the progressive scroll speed functionality contributes
to this "nervous" scroll feeling, and I propose turning that off by
default as well.

This will make scrolling Emacs behave more similar to other
applications, and I think it will provide a more pleasant scrolling
experience.

-- Simen

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Re: Default mouse wheel scrolling is jumpy

[Stefan Monnier]

> It's especially bad in the cases where it's hard to control each
> scroll event, such as with laptop touchpads or with ThinkPad-style
> trackpoints.  Then I find the default scrolling mechanism next to
> unusable.

I see Firefox uses more like a setting of 2 rather than 5 nowadays, so
maybe we should revisit those defaults indeed.  Part of the reason is
that devices have changed.  With the (old) wheel-mouse I'm using
a setting of 5 works rather well, but the rare few times I've used
a touchpad with a scroll area, I've indeed found the behavior to be
difficult to use.


        Stefan

Re: Default mouse wheel scrolling is jumpy

[Dmitry Gutov]

On 05/19/2015 04:16 AM, Stefan Monnier wrote:

> I see Firefox uses more like a setting of 2 rather than 5 nowadays, so
> maybe we should revisit those defaults indeed.  Part of the reason is
> that devices have changed.

IME, Firefox scrolls by 3 lines rather than 2.

> With the (old) wheel-mouse I'm using
> a setting of 5 works rather well, but the rare few times I've used
> a touchpad with a scroll area, I've indeed found the behavior to be
> difficult to use.

Touchpads are tricky to get right, and the scroll amount (that the user 
expects) also differs by the OS.

Maybe we should have a different setting for them, if distinguishing is 
possible.

Re: Default mouse wheel scrolling is jumpy

[Simen Heggestøyl]

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On Tue, May 19, 2015 at 3:28 AM, Dmitry Gutov <dgutov@yandex.ru> wrote:
> On 05/19/2015 04:16 AM, Stefan Monnier wrote:
> 
>> I see Firefox uses more like a setting of 2 rather than 5 nowadays, 
>> so
>> maybe we should revisit those defaults indeed.  Part of the reason is
>> that devices have changed.
> 
> IME, Firefox scrolls by 3 lines rather than 2.

I guess that depends on which font sizes you usually encounter. IME,
it's often close to 2 lines.

How about changing the default to 2 lines and see how it works out,
then?

>> With the (old) wheel-mouse I'm using
>> a setting of 5 works rather well, but the rare few times I've used
>> a touchpad with a scroll area, I've indeed found the behavior to be
>> difficult to use.
> 
> Touchpads are tricky to get right, and the scroll amount (that the 
> user expects) also differs by the OS.
> 
> Maybe we should have a different setting for them, if distinguishing 
> is possible.

That also sounds good, if it is possible to do so.

Another thought also struck me, but I know very little about such
things, so I'm going to ask: how hard would it be to (optionally)
piggy-back the window system's native scrolling mechanisms?

-- Simen

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