Re: PATCH 4.6.0pre1 change panel scroll behavior

[Pavel Roskin <proski gnu org>]

Hello!

> Right, I see.  Therefore the scroll by half screen thing.  It keeps the
> list stationary as much as possible, so you can work on a chunk of it.  
> Esthetically speaking, I like the effect, and it was a _clean_ hack
> LOL... maybe a ini thing... smooth_scrolling=1?  I surf a lot of long
> file lists, and I find it easier to read as they are going by.

I don't think I'll ever use this option, so it's hard for me to judge, but
isn't it inconsistent that selecting items by the mouse doesn't cause the
list to shift?  If the cursor is close to the beginning of the visible
list, I would think that it's also close to the begginning of the full
list, and that would be wrong if I (accidentally) select an item with the
mouse.

If this patch is applied (even with the changes that make this behavior
optional), somebody is going to "fix" the mouse behavior.  Then again,
somebody (possibly you) will disagree, another option is born, documented
in 5 languages, and so on.

I don't think that Midnight Commander should be a testbed for user
interfaces.  It has always tried to reuse interfaces of other programs.  
It's designed to be simple and intuitive.

I'd rather see mouse wheel scrolling implemented on the panels - it's a
standard, and it's what users expect to work (and it can be done already
with xterm and gnome-terminal).  I don't think that any user expects to
see "smooth scrolling".  It doesn't invalidate your idea, but it shows
what our priorities should be.

> >Next time make sure that your patch is not mangled by your mailer.  If you 
> >cannot do it, use gzip.
> >
> Yes I will gzip them. I saw what it looked like after I posted it.  
> Apologies. That's mozilla for you. It mangles html almost as bad as ms.  
> What do you use?

I'm using pine, but it has its own problem - it add DOS newlines to text 
attachments, so I have to compress them or include inline.

> ps. How long have you been working on mc? I just got here.

I first saw mc in 1996, and I started sending patches soon after that.  
At first, I only had a UUCP connection, so I had to use an FTP to UUCP
gateway to get mc and patches.  Good old days :-)

The first release made by me was 4.5.55.  It was released on August 24,
2001.  My former neighbors (who came from Ukraine) were pleased by the
fact that the release happened on the Ukrainian Independence Day :-)

-- 
Regards,
Pavel Roskin