Re: [vile] Unfamiliar scroll bar operation in Ubuntu build of xvile - how to use it?

[Thomas Dickey]

On Fri, Dec 23, 2011 at 05:32:50PM +0000, Chris Green wrote:
> I have just upgraded my system to xubuntu 11.10 and, seeing that the
> repository version of vile/xvile was pretty up to date I installed it. 
> 
> However it seems to have an odd (i.e. unfamiliar to me) scroll-bar set
> up.  Can anyone tell me how it's supposed to work because I can't see
> any way at the moment to simply drag the bar up and down to scroll the
> text. 
> 
> What I see is a fairly normal looking scroll bar but when I hover the
> mouse pointer over any part of the scroll bar the pointer changes to a
> double headed arrow pointing up and down.
> 
> Aha, I see what's going on:-
> 
>     Button 1 - scroll down a chunk
>     Button 3 - scroll up a chunk
>     Button 2 - drag the scroll bar
> 
> The trouble is that I use a trackball and click and drag with button 2
> is most awkward.
> 
> Is there any way I can change this behaviour without a d-i-y build of
> xvile?

hmm.  I hadn't noticed.  The Debian package is probably built using the default
Xaw scrollbars (though in my non-package builds I've been using Kevin's
improvement, which may be relevant).  If that's the case, it's doable, though
there's little documentation.  The Athena widget set uses the same sort of
"translations" resource that xterm does.  Here is a short example that I made
for xterm's manpage that addresses a similar issue:

       Some people prefer using the  left  pointer  button  for  dragging  the
       scrollbar  thumb.   That  can  be  setup  by  altering the translations
       resource, e.g.,

           *VT100.scrollbar.translations:#override \n\
                <Btn5Down>:StartScroll(Forward) \n\
                <Btn1Down>:StartScroll(Continuous) MoveThumb() NotifyThumb() \n\
                <Btn4Down>:StartScroll(Backward) \n\
                <Btn1Motion>:MoveThumb() NotifyThumb() \n\
                <BtnUp>:  NotifyScroll(Proportional) EndScroll()

For xterm, "*VT100" is apt.  For xvile... reading the code it seems to
use the same "scrollbar" application name, so you might get some useful
results from that example just by trimming off the "VT100." part.

On the other hand, the other button-related features of xvile are specific.

-- 
Thomas E. Dickey <address@hidden>
http://invisible-island.net
ftp://invisible-island.net

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