[Okular-devel] [okular] [Bug 219121] if holding mouse mid button, perform scroll instead zoom

[Gregory M. Turner]

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=219121

--- Comment #7 from Gregory M. Turner <gmt at be-evil.net> ---
Perhaps Albert, who WONTFIX'ed this, is not aware of why some people might want
this so badly.  Many folks using an IBM or Lenovo laptop with a TouchStyk, but
without a TouchPad, are accustomed to using their middle mouse button as a
proxy for the mouse wheel.

There is a loose convention, not universally respected, but respected at least
by all Microsoft Office Suite tools, WebKit-based programs, Adobe products,
older XUL-based products (unfortunately broken now without a plugin), KHTML
browsers, and many more -- but, infuriatingly, ignored, with no frobs to fix
the bug (correct word usage imo), by okular and a few other critically
important kdebase components.

Specifically, the convention I'm talking about is: that by continuously
depressing the middle mouse button and moving the mouse, one can simulate
mouse-wheel movements without requiring a mouse wheel.

This is also a boon for those (most?) with single-axis mouse wheels, and who
want to recover the horizontal mouse wheel feature somehow.  When using an
actual "mouse" (by which I mean, the things that actually look like a mouse,
with balls or lasers in them), this might seem pretty awkward and stupid.

But when using a Lenovo-style keyboard with a touchstyk, it feels very natural.
 So long as applications follow the convention, we don't miss our mouse wheels
(in fact, when we see "mouse" people struggling with their "standard"
mouse-wheels, with their awkward "number of lines to scroll per
mouse-wheel-movement-quantum" setting, we might even feel a bit sorry for
them).

Sadly, but probably for good technical/configurability reasons, this convention
is not effected at the driver level, but left to applications to implement, on
a case-by-case basis.  Most do, but a few stragglers don't.  Sometimes, this is
not a big deal, as not every application requires a bunch of scrolling. 
Clearly, okular does not fit into that category.  Scrolling is, obviously, a
very central feature of any e-reader-type application.

Anyhow, many of us have come to rely on this convention being implemented in
most other tools we use.  Personally I probably do this hundreds of times a day
on average and have done so for years.  After a while, it becomes second
nature.

So in okular, the experience we have goes like this:

ah, what a nice, attractive, uncluttered tool.  time to read.
reading...
reading...
must scroll.  oops! I just zoomed waaay out.  OK, how do I reset the zoom to
some reasonable level again?  ah yes... ok so how do I scroll?  ugh, scroll
bars? arrow keys?  oh well, one does what one has to.... ok, back to reading.
reading...
reading...
must scroll.  oops!! sigh.... ok, reset zoom, awkwardly scroll in some
unfamiliar way... sheesh, fixed.   back to reading.
reading...
reading...
must scroll.  FUCK!!!!!   Is there some way to make this work right?  No?  you
kidding me?  fuck this, no more okular for me.

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