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I have no idea about linux, scrolling on windows is pretty much hardcoded to use a early 2000s scroll wheel mouse. Because of their low resolution, windows scr

by geon 6y ago

I have no idea about linux, scrolling on windows is pretty much hardcoded to use a early 2000s scroll wheel mouse. Because of their low resolution, windows scrolling is done one text line at a time, while macs scroll a pixel at a time. This sounds superficial, but it is really not. With the higher resolution, you get a very direct connection with the scrolled content. Without this almost tactile feedback, inertial scrolling doesn’t work at all. And since scrolling is like 90 % of what I use a trackpad for, I will not even consider using windows with a trackpad until they have fixed it.

jon-wood 6y ago
The tactile feedback comes from the fact Mac OS has the concept of a scroll having an amount of inertia behind it, if I very gently move two fingers up and down on a long web page then it will very gently move a few pixels, but if I flick two fingers from the bottom of the touchpad to the top then its going to go flying upwards. If I then put a finger down on the touchpad it'll stop the scroll immediately. This behaviour one of the things in Mac OS that nobody really notices because it feels so intuitive, but if you took it away everyone would be puzzling over why scrolling feels broken.
chapium 6y ago
Is this why touchpad scrolling is so crazy in LibreOffice? On windows, mouse and scrollwheel works fine in Libre. Using touchpad it shoots the document to the moon each time scrolling gestures are applied. There is not a similar effect in other applications.
- geon 6y ago
  Probably. Google maps used to have huge problems with zooming (since it was meant to use the scroll wheel), as did a lot of games that relied on the mouse wheel to cycle through an inventory.
dylan-m 6y ago
I feel like things are a little better in the regular users (modern stock GNOME) chunk of Linux land: Wayland / GDK / GTK handle touchpad gestures as well as "smooth" scroll events, which are sent in combination with regular (coarse-grained) touchpad scroll events. Works out of the box in GTK 3 applications, so as an application developer all you have to do (if you're targeting GNOME) is not use a dead version of GTK :b GTK 3 even does scroll inertia: https://developer.gnome.org/gtk3/stable/GtkScrolledWindow.html#GtkScrolledWindow--kinetic-scrolling https://developer.gnome.org/gtk3/stable/GtkScrolledWindow.ht.... Firefox started supporting this stuff recently, as well. I think the story is similar for Windows, but a little less satisfying since their hodepodge of UI toolkits starts from the very core, whereas at least with modern desktop Linux distros the core apps are generally implemented the same way. Alas, mouse wheels are a whole other story. Pixel perfect scroll wheels have been a thing for a while, and Windows actually has support for these (not that it works anywhere). Support in Linux has been progressing at a similarly glacial pace, but it looks really promising. That's one spot where Apple is definitely years ahead. (If only they would make a practical mouse…).
seltzered_ 6y ago
"scrolling on windows is pretty much hardcoded to use a early 2000s scroll wheel mouse" No longer true. Windows 10 works pretty well as long you use precision trackpad, or use an apple touchpad with a third party driver (https://github.com/imbushuo/mac-precision-touchpad https://github.com/imbushuo/mac-precision-touchpad , https://magicutilities.net https://magicutilities.net )

by geon 6y ago

jon-wood 6y ago

The tactile feedback comes from the fact Mac OS has the concept of a scroll having an amount of inertia behind it, if I very gently move two fingers up and down on a long web page then it will very gently move a few pixels, but if I flick two fingers from the bottom of the touchpad to the top then its going to go flying upwards. If I then put a finger down on the touchpad it'll stop the scroll immediately. This behaviour one of the things in Mac OS that nobody really notices because it feels so intuitive, but if you took it away everyone would be puzzling over why scrolling feels broken.

chapium 6y ago

Is this why touchpad scrolling is so crazy in LibreOffice? On windows, mouse and scrollwheel works fine in Libre. Using touchpad it shoots the document to the moon each time scrolling gestures are applied. There is not a similar effect in other applications.

geon 6y ago
Probably. Google maps used to have huge problems with zooming (since it was meant to use the scroll wheel), as did a lot of games that relied on the mouse wheel to cycle through an inventory.

dylan-m 6y ago

I feel like things are a little better in the regular users (modern stock GNOME) chunk of Linux land: Wayland / GDK / GTK handle touchpad gestures as well as "smooth" scroll events, which are sent in combination with regular (coarse-grained) touchpad scroll events. Works out of the box in GTK 3 applications, so as an application developer all you have to do (if you're targeting GNOME) is not use a dead version of GTK :b GTK 3 even does scroll inertia: https://developer.gnome.org/gtk3/stable/GtkScrolledWindow.html#GtkScrolledWindow--kinetic-scrolling https://developer.gnome.org/gtk3/stable/GtkScrolledWindow.ht.... Firefox started supporting this stuff recently, as well. I think the story is similar for Windows, but a little less satisfying since their hodepodge of UI toolkits starts from the very core, whereas at least with modern desktop Linux distros the core apps are generally implemented the same way. Alas, mouse wheels are a whole other story. Pixel perfect scroll wheels have been a thing for a while, and Windows actually has support for these (not that it works anywhere). Support in Linux has been progressing at a similarly glacial pace, but it looks really promising. That's one spot where Apple is definitely years ahead. (If only they would make a practical mouse…).

seltzered_ 6y ago

"scrolling on windows is pretty much hardcoded to use a early 2000s scroll wheel mouse" No longer true. Windows 10 works pretty well as long you use precision trackpad, or use an apple touchpad with a third party driver (https://github.com/imbushuo/mac-precision-touchpad https://github.com/imbushuo/mac-precision-touchpad , https://magicutilities.net https://magicutilities.net )