Re: vertical scrollbar error on MS Windows

[Stefan Monnier]

>> If I understand correctly what you mean, then the Xaw behavior is exactly
>> what we want. That leaves it to the application to decide whether the
>> thumb can "slide past the end" or not.

> Xaw certainly has its nostalgic charme with its own behaviour
> and design.  But, no, I don't think you want Xaw behaviour with
> windows scrollbars.  Not even with GTK scrollbars, really.

I sure do.

>> A slider that slides past the end is not a problem, really.
>> You seem to dislike it, could you explain why?

> Actually I don't know what it means.  An end where it can 
> go past is not the end, no?

So you don't like it because .... you don't know what it means?
Why would you want to "know what it means"?

> Ah, okay, maybe you see it differently. Such that the slider
> does not shrink on bottom, but actually slips into some
> slit in the frame. Is it that?

A scrollbar is nothing more than a bunch of pixels that give you some rough
idea of where you are (and how much of the rest there is left to see), along
with some way to move with the use of a mouse.

I believe that confining oneself strictly to some analogy to the physical
world is just plain dumb.  What's the benefit, concretely?  No user has ever
complained that she doesn't understand how Emacs scrollbars work just
because they "slide off the end".  When the thumb slides off the end, all
users know immediately that it "has slid off the end": they understand it
completely intuitively.  Only GUI-nitpickers get annoyed that it doesn't
conform to some model.


        Stefan