Re: Scrollbar bug on OS X

[Stefan Monnier]

> As it stands now, the scrollbars are jerking around in size, however, and
> when you try to drag the scrollbar, the displayed portion of the buffer will
> jump somewhere unpredictable.

Yes, and these are just plain bugs.

> Anyways, can I as a user please get the freedom to configure whether I like
> over-scrolling or not?

Of course, as soon as someone implements it.

>> The only reason why you disagree is because you haven't tried to write the
>> code that interfaces something like Emacs with one of those silly
>> scrollbars.  After working on such code you realize that GUI guidelines
>> might be great, but they shouldn't be "cast in code" directly in the GUI
>> library because there are always exceptions.
> What would be a good argument for such an exception?

Who cares?  Every rule bumps into an aexception sooner or later.
Every "model" or "metaphor" has its limits.

> The fact that it's hard to interface with the event-driven (or whatever)
> interface models of certain current APIs might be due to other players in
> this game than the UI toolkit.

Event-drivenness is usually just a technical detail which may make the code
ugly, buggy, and/or brittle, but rarely if ever has any real impact on the
feasible behavior.

> Let's say one can state what would be good from a UI perspective, and then
> one will have to figure out what is reasonably doable from a technical
> standpoint.  Arguments IMHO start with the user-centric view!

Who said otherwise?

> Either way, I would humbly suggest that the bugs be fixed first; I know it's
> hard and I know that I can't do it lacking knowledge of the technical
> implementation. And I understand these things are difficult, so I won't
> even try.

There's no evidence that it's hard, actually.  It's probably just plain and
simple bugs, and like most bugs they can probably appear trivial and obvious
if you happen to look at it from the right angle.  Give it a try.


        Stefan