Re: Scroll bars.

["Ben 'The Con Man' Kahn" <xkahn cybersites com>]

> One possible addition would be for the user to grab the text pane with
> the mouse and scroll it directly.
> 
> If I could do that, and have the keyboard work, I could easily do
> without scrollbars entirely (perhaps except for showing the extent of
> the pane, perhaps a thermometer-like widget would suffice?   As a
> themeability option?  [XEmacs has a neat, slim and discreet scrollbar -
> it may look different with other configs than mine, though.]).

	There are two interesting points here.  The first is the scroll
function.  Jot (a text editor on SGI) uses the third mouse button to
scroll around by grabing the text pane.  VERY nice when you get used to
it.  

	Netscape 1.1 did somethign similar when viewing a picture.  (I
think it stopped after that version..  It might have been Netscape 0.99.
:^) )  So this is a common idea.  Obviously if this were put into normal
X, the third mouse button is usually reserved for extended cut-and-paste
functions and popup menus.  (See xterms)  But a alt-right click usually
doesn't do too much.  (Actually, I have it set to lower/raise the window
I'm in, but...)  

	The next point about scroll bars goes beyond themes.  Sometimes it
is a good idea to represent events in the scroll bars.  The above
mentioned jot for example...  The scrool bar is a box which is sized
according to the amount of text seen in the window.  However, if you mark
text, that area is also highlighted in the scrollbar.  This lets you
easily see what you have marked, where it is, what percentage of the
document is marked, etc.  We can use the scrollbars to present all sorts
of information.  (Imagine doing a search in a document, and all the
matches showing up as a color in the scroll bar!)

						-Ben

------------------------------------ |\      _,,,--,,_  ,) ----------
Benjamin Kahn                        /,`.-'`'   -,  ;-;;'
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ben@cybersites.com --------------- '---''(_/--' (_/-' ---------------
 If you love something, write it in C; if it compiles, it is yours; 
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