In Navigator panel, mouse wheel should scroll horizontally

• Jul 13, 2020 - 11:42

Currently when the mouse is in the Navigator panel, the mouse wheel does nothing. It would be useful if it could scroll horizontally, and even better if two faster scrolling speeds were accessible by holding Shift or Control. (In fact there could even be more by combining them and/or using the Alt modifier too, but that might be overkill.)


Comments

In reply to by Jojo-Schmitz

If you mean Shift+scroll in the main score panel, I already use that, but scrolling the navigator is a separate and independent thing. Scrolling the score is most useful for moving short distances, whereas scrolling the navigator is best for jumping longer distances more quickly. It's already possible to use the navigator's horizontal scroll bar to jump way ahead or behind of where the score is currently being viewed, and that's a very useful and important feature IMHO; however it is not optimal due to Fitt's Law, bearing in mind that you have to move the mouse to a thin scroll bar before being able to move it. Scrolling with the mouse wheel anywhere in the navigator panel would be much more accessible.

It's pretty well established in most devices these days that scroll by itself means vertical, or with Shift means horizontal, so I'm not a big fan of inventing our own non-standard interpretation of these gestures, especially just for this one window. I note the Timeline already works as I'd expect - scroll by itself is vertical, with shift is horizontal. I'd be more in favor of simply bringing the Navigator in line with this more standard intepretation. Although since vertical scrolling isn't really meaningful within the Navigator since it autosizes, I guess there is no harm in also plain scroll go horizontal (in addition to having Shift+scroll do this).

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

Thanks for the response!

"Although since vertical scrolling isn't really meaningful within the Navigator since it autosizes, I guess there is no harm in also plain scroll go horizontal (in addition to having Shift+scroll do this)."

Yes, that was why I suggested it :-) Non-standard interpretation seems completely fine to me when the alternative is completely useless (i.e. "do nothing"). Additionally, having Shift speed up the scrolling (or Control if you are worried about breaking expectations) seems like another cheap opportunity for improving on "do nothing".

BTW I don't think mouse-wheel for horizontal scroll is particularly unusual in contexts where vertical scroll is not needed. Transcribe! from seventhstring.com uses it, and I think maybe kdenlive too off the top of my head, but I'm pretty sure I've seen others too.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

Although since vertical scrolling isn't really meaningful within the Navigator since it autosizes, I guess there is no harm in also plain scroll go horizontal (in addition to having Shift+scroll do this).

Actually, that's not true in either of these two cases that come to mind:

  1. The user is zoomed in on the score.
  2. The Scroll Pages preference is set to Vertically.

These cases are both compelling reasons not to unconditionally allow the mouse wheel to scroll horizontally, as it absolutely needs to scroll vertically in both of these cases.

Maybe in the first case we can do a compromise: If the score is zoomed in, scroll vertically until we get to the bottom of the page, then roll over to the next visible column and continue scrolling vertically there. That “rolling over” would reduce to a simple horizontal scroll in the case where the score is not zoomed in, giving us the best of both worlds.

I'd have to implement and actually test it to decide whether or not this is actually a good idea.

I also want to point out that many mice, including the one I'm currently using, have the ability to scroll horizontally by tilting the scroll wheel left or right. Regardless of how we decide to handle rolling the scroll wheel, I'd definitely want to handle tilting correctly.

In reply to by Spire42

We might be talking about different things. I had in mind scrolling the navigator itself, not the score. So zoom on the score or page pages vertically have no relevance here. The Navigator, to my knowledge, never scrolls vertically. Although I recall a proposal to allow it to be docked on the side instead of the bottom, and I guess in that case it would only scroll vertically.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

We might be talking about different things. I had in mind scrolling the navigator itself, not the score. So zoom on the score or page pages vertically have no relevance here.

No, we're not talking about different things. If you zoom in on the score, the navigator also reflects this by decreasing the height of the rectangle that represents the current “window” that the score view sees. When this happens, scrolling by rolling the scroll wheel over the Navigator should move this rectangle up and down, causing the score view to scroll vertically.

The Navigator, to my knowledge, never scrolls vertically. Although I recall a proposal to allow it to be docked on the side instead of the bottom, and I guess in that case it would only scroll vertically.

That's the second case I was talking about: When Scroll Pages is set to Vertically, the Navigator can only be docked on the side, and thus must scroll vertically as well.

In reply to by Spire42

We are definitely talking about different things. I wasn't talking about the rectangle moving at all. I was talking about scrolling the navigator itself - same as dragging its (horizontal) scroll bar. Only relevant when there are more pages than can fit in the Navigator. And since the OP also mentioned the scrollbar, my assumption is that is what he meant as well.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

OK, thanks for the clarification; now we're on the same page (ha!). It's definitely possible that I misinterpreted the original request.

FWIW, when the Navigator is docked to the side, the scroll wheel already scrolls as you describe (scrolling the Navigator itself, same as dragging its scroll bar). So that works, at least.

In reply to by Spire42

Yes, I (the OP) was also referring to achieving the same effect as dragging the scroll bar, rather than moving the highlighted rectangle. Sorry for the confusion; totally missed that it might have sounded like I meant the latter!

How do you dock the Navigator to the side? I had no idea that was possible.

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