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[Aurélien Gâteau]

Thomas Lübking wrote:
> Am Friday 24 April 2009 schrieb Aurélien Gâteau:
> 
>> First I believe most non-techy users do not use multiple monitors.
> (this is unerlate to the rest, and) just for the records:
> from my personal experience multimonitor setups are mostly used by artists, 
> CAD designers and dtp's. nerds don't use many monitors but tend to steer on 
> /one/ (they actually never move their head - unless the other one has a p0rn 
> screensaver... ;-P )
> 
>> Second, just because there are many ways to get screwed, doesn't mean we
>> should add others. It's not just me: I have witnessed this problem with
>> a few users.
> sorry, but if you're not in control of an input device, why not just drop (or 
> deactivate) it? - it's pretty simple to make the mousewheel do nothing.

Sure, tell auntie Nora to do it, so that she stops yelling at me this
Linux thing is crazy.

>> I believe mouse wheel on empty Plasma space is bad too, especially since
>> it can't be undone:
> clicking the "close window" button can't be undone either, so that's a bad 
> feature? (short: it's a bad argument, sorry)
> 
>> scroll from empty desktop to busy desktop, now
>> scroll back... can't do that, the window in front just caught the mouse
>> event.
> well, just adapt to the new situation (you btw introduced yourself),

We are talking about *accidental* wheel-scroll here, auntie Nora did not
introduce the problem herself, she did not want to switch between
spaces, she just slipped her mouse out of the window while putting her
hand back on it.

> errr, i'll take position for my beloved MX500 that has done a great and 
> reliable job for YEARS now:
> 
> could you please say "my mousewheel emulation on my touchpad"? [*]
> 
> mousewheels /are/ precise (they do one "click" by one "click", just the delta 
> may vary, but it's (appside) easy to ignore it if you want to trigger 
> "precise" stuff by it) and they're not "too easy to accidently trigger" as 
> well (as long as your fine motorics aren't broken - but then a mouse is a 
> problem in general)
> 
> in contrast to that, touchpads are the most $§$%&*' UI devices /ever/. they're 
> just nowhere any "precise" enough.
> 
> luckily they tend to turn off when you plug in a mouse and if you can't use a 
> mouse "well: be happy with what you've got"

Unfortunately, more and more people are using laptops with touchpad
wheels. Are we going to say users: "go buy a *real* mouse!"

> please don't get me wrong,
> i /do/ see that touchpad wheels introduce problems (trust me, i do...sadly) 
> but imho the solution (to this very problem) was to write an (X wide) MW 
> filter that passes wheelevents only to a customizable whitelist of apps. not 
> to say: "hey my touchpad is crap, can we please not use anything but single 
> leftclicks?"

One usually do not trigger mouse clicks accidentally because it's a
point-and-click operation. Wheel-scroll is not: you just roll the wheel,
thinking the mouse is still over the document you are reading. That's
the whole point of mouse wheel: scrolling without pointing the cursor at
the scrollbar.

When the mouse cursor slips out of the window, auntie Nora is helpless
if the browser suddenly switches between tabs, or if the wm switches to
another window/desktop. This is because mouse-wheel is expected to be a
very easy-to-undo operation: if you roll a bit too low, just roll it a
bit up to get where you want. Magical pagers and taskbars break this.

Aurélien