Re: Proposal to improve the nomenclature of scrolling directions

[Dmitry Gutov]

Eli Zaretskii <address@hidden> writes:

>> From: Adrian Robert <address@hidden>
>> Date: Tue, 6 Nov 2012 17:24:08 +0000 (UTC)
>>
>> Stephen J. Turnbull <stephen <at> xemacs.org> writes:
>>
>> >
>> > Nix writes:
>> >
>> >  > (Even on mobile devices with touchscreens, where you swipe the text
>> >  > to move the text up, that operation is *still* called 'scrolling
>> >  > down'.)
>> >
>> > Which drives me nuts, because it's the text that moves (and that's
>> > true in editors, as well).  For me it's "page down" but "scroll the
>> > text up".  "Scroll [nothing in particular but Do What I Mean dammit]
>> > <direction>" is just uninterpretable to me.
>>
>> Sure, the text moves, but we don't care about it.
>
> Alas, people _do_ care about what they do vs what they say or see.
> Try calling something white "black" and see if it sticks.

Sure, people do care. The main difference is what's to be considered the
point of reference. If we consider the text as more "important", then it
feels "glued in place", and the window scolls down. If, on the other 
hand, the editor is the center of the universe, then yes, the window 
doesn't move anywhere, it's the text that scrolls up.

>> "Scroll down" refers to what happens with the *viewer's* perspective
>> into the content that we are focusing on.
>
> This reasoning would work if you'd need to swipe the window's frame
> down, and text would then move up.  But that's not what's happening:
> the user must explicitly swipe the text UP.
>
> This is different from desktops, where you press a key labeled "Page
> Down", and don't make any gestures in the upward direction.

A good physical analogy might be climbing a tree. You're climbing down,
but when each of yours hands is touching the tree, it's going up
relative to you. When climbing up, vice versa.