Re: Proposal to improve the nomenclature of scrolling directions

[Stephen Leake]

"Stephen J. Turnbull" <address@hidden> writes:

> And that's why it's so intuitive that Google Maps gives you a hand to
> grab the map with, and the map moves in the direction the hand goes?

Yes; you grabbed the map, not the viewport.

> That's why I get vertigo when I drag the scrollbar thumb down and the
> text scrolls up?

The scrollbar thumb controls the viewport, not the contents (the map, in
this case).

Once you get used to thinking about things in terms of _either_ viewport
or content, scrolling makes sense.

Apple recently changed the direction;
http://www.pcworld.com/article/236182/osx_lion_scrolling.html

I'm not clear whether Emacs matched Apple before or after the change;
the article talks about "finger motion", not "mouse motion".

> While I don't dispute that your model is what describe, and don't
> really have any ground to claim it's a minority view, I believe that
> "everybody's mental model" is rather more nuanced.  Not to mention
> "plural". :-)

+1

Which means there's not much point in changing Emacs functionality,
although adding the concept of "viewport" to the documentation would be
a good idea.

-- 
-- Stephe