Re: Scrolling in Xcode editor
Re: Scrolling in Xcode editor
- Subject: Re: Scrolling in Xcode editor
- From: John Deane <email@hidden>
- Date: Mon, 30 Oct 2006 23:50:45 +0000
On 27 Oct 2006, at 20:28, Jeffrey Oleander wrote:
Say, for example, you are somewhere near the middle
of a large file and the cursor is about half way down
the window. You wish to scroll up (or down) to locate
a some code. As you press the cursor key the
cursor moves as you would expect and your gaze
follows the cursor as it moves towards the top (or
bottom) of the window, effectively using the cursor
as a visual reference point to help you find the
text you are looking for.
However, when the cursor reaches the top (or bottom) line
of the window the next key press causes the contents
of the window to scroll, not by a single line to reveal
the next line of the file, but by half the number lines
in the window, moving the cursor back to the
middle line of the window again. Almost instantly your
eyes have to move their focus a significant distance...
You're correct. That is a problem.
What I've seen some apps do that I like better is scroll by
one line when they get to within n lines of the top or
bottom, so that you always have a little context. And n
can be set by the user. And then there needs to be a
little minor exception handling for when the cursor nears
the very top or bottom of the file.
Having 1-10 lines of context makes reading through the
file, and spotting those bugs caused by something a line or
two above the line about which you've been alerted, quite a
bit easier.
Yes this would be an ideal but allowing the cursor to move to the
first/last line in the file and scrolling from there would suffice.
I can imagine there was a time when processing power was limited such
that scrolling through a file in half screen high increments was a
good thing to do as this would only require the display to be
refreshed every screen height / 2 lines and not every line as would
otherwise be the case. I'm trying to imagine how the current
behaviour could be considered useful but I can not. I've mentally
filed it along with other quirks such as the equally perplexing
"Multiple list item selected using cursor keys" feature (see below
for an explanation).
I hope Xcode 3 fixes this 'feature' and a few others such as the
CodeSense's inability to handle even the simplest C++/STL source files.
OT: "Multiple list item selected using cursor keys" feature - I'll
probably post this to the Cocoa mailing list at some point.
This perplexing behaviour, to me anyway, is related to how multiple
list items are selected in list type controls, for example Finder's
list or column views. Say, for example, you wanted to select several
adjacent items in the list without using the mouse (though you could
use the mouse for the selection of the first item). Use cursor up/
down to select the first item of the group of items that you wish to
select. Now, hold down shift and press the cursor down key. This
will select the next item as you would expect. You repeat this a few
more times but accidentally select more items than you want. Logic
would seem to suggest that pressing shift-cursor-up would deselect
the last selected item but it does not. Instead of what would be
useful behaviour, the last item remains selected but now the item
above the first item in the list that was selected becomes selected
too. Effectively this means that you have to get your selection
right or start again. It is not all that hard to do if all of the
items to be selected are visible on screen but when you are scrolling
through a long list to find the beginning or end of the range of
items to be selected you will almost certainly select more items than
you want.
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