Re: Proposal to improve the nomenclature of scrolling directions

[Nix <nix@esperi.org.uk>]

On 6 Nov 2012, Stephen J. Turnbull verbalised:
> The reason the phrases you give don't make sense[1] is that the implicit
> object of the verb "scroll" has changed from the text (or the scroll
> the text is printed on) to something else -- but I wish you luck
> coming up with a coherent definition of that object for the phrases
> you quote.

FWIW the object I have always imagined is scrolling down is 'the user's
viewport'. So 'scroll down' and 'scroll the text up' are synonymous, but
the latter is almost never used, since everyone's mental model these
days is of unchanging text and a freely moving viewport over the top of
it.

(This model is also why I use Eli Barzilay's wonderfully simple
scroll-in-place implementation, which I really should contribute to
upstream Emacs one of these years: I had Eli's go-ahead nearly two years
ago, IIRC, and it does need a couple of lines of changes to Gnus to work
properly so upstream Emacs is the right place for it. If what you are
scrolling is a moving viewport, it is *seriously* confusing to have a
sequence of PgDns followed by the same number of PgUps not be an inverse
at all times, and vice versa for the other way around. If you think of
the text as moving, it is somewhat less confusing, though perhaps not
less annoying.)

-- 
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