QtGUI: Remove scroll wheel check for scrollbars in Windows and Linux #3686
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Temporary workaround for issue supercollider#3552. Automatically-faded scroll bars do not work well in Linux or Windows. Unfortunately, if the user touches the scroll wheel, then scroll bars start to fade out and become unreachable.
jamshark70
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@jamshark70 This does not quite make it for me (ArchLinux). Here are the behaviors on both my installed wm:
I really believe that this behavior is WM-dependent, not sure how to really fix it. |
That's the behavior I get in XFCE if I run vanilla sclang, without this patch. With the patch, scrollbars stay up. So it isn't only WM-dependent. Maybe you've changed some other system setting that overrides the function, or maybe you're accidentally running an unpatched sclang. |
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@jamshark70 oops you're right, I forgot to apply the patch.. So with this PR applied the scrollbars are always visible, even with |
As noted in #3552,
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Still I admit I prefer the transient scrollbars behavior (i.e. which automatically show/hide) than always showing scrollbars. |
I don't disagree with you, but... it's tied to the scroll wheel. Go ahead, find somebody who's a bit into computers and try to explain this behavior to them. If they say, "sure, that makes sense," then I'll drop the point. There are open questions in #3552. Answering those would go further toward resolving this. |
I agree that I was confused when this feature first appeared (I believe on Mac OS a couple of years ago) but then got used to it: no scrollbars? ah yeah they will only appear when I'm scrolling, fine :) |
But you haven't had the experience of explaining to a student who is using windows why she should rigorously avoid touching the scroll wheel... and being met by that "you're kidding, right?" stare. |
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"no scrollbars? ah yeah they will only appear when I'm scrolling, fine :)" Also, nobody has answered the question of how to use a horizontal scroller when one's mouse has only a vertical scroll wheel. |
Away from my machine right now but the horizontal bar used to appear as soon as the cursor approaches it. Doesn't this work for you? |
No, it doesn't. As I stated in the other issue report, on my system, the ONLY way to get the scrollbars to reappear is to touch the scroll wheel, and then I have only a second to grab the handle. If it worked as you say, then I wouldn't have had to log any issue at all. Part of the problem seems to be that people are assuming that it's easy to get the scrollbars to show up, when my experience is that it's nearly impossible once they disappear. (There appears to be quite some variability in the behavior between systems. You can't assume the scrollbars work exactly the same on my system as on yours.) I had forgotten to mention that TX Modular features scroll views within scroll views. If you're trying to conjure up a horizontal scroller using a vertical scroll wheel, in that case, it happens quite often that the outer ScrollView pushes the inner view's scrollbar away from the mouse position. So then, the procedure is: touch the scroll wheel to un-fade the scrollbars, quickly move the mouse to find the handle, and hope you did it both quickly and accurately (and if you miss, start over). |
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Retested with Qt 5.11. Same behavior. Scrollbars do NOT automatically reappear when you mouse over them. |
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We're not quite finished with it because some users do want scrollbars to fade (for that matter, I wouldn't mind it myself if Qt would show them upon mouse-over). There's a loose proposal for that in #3552, but the discussion is missing implementation details. I should probably close that ticket and condense the material. Anyway, lately I was thinking, the behavior is fundamentally broken on two platforms (or at least window managers), and providing less-broken behavior was being held up by a desire for an extra nicety that works in some places but not others. That doesn't make sense to me. So thank you both for taking the initiative. |
Temporary workaround for issue #3552.
Automatically-faded scroll bars do not work well in Linux or Windows. Unfortunately, if the user touches the scroll wheel, then scroll bars start to fade out and become unreachable.
Under issue #3552, we were discussing research into Linux and Windows system preferences for fading scrollbars, and per-view control. That's an extensive enhancement request.
In the meantime, I was recently in the position of trying to explain to a classroom of students why the scrollbars disappear if you touch the scroll wheel, but not before. Let's just say that the rationale for the current behavior was met with universal incomprehension.
Currently, we have a situation that simply doesn't make sense to typical users in Windows and Linux. So, at the very least, for 3.10, it would be a measurable improvement just to get rid of that logic. It doesn't close the other issue, but at least it would change the behavior to something explainable.