Bug 43385

Summary:	Two-finger scrolling scrolls horizontally and vertically simultaneously
Product:	xorg	Reporter:	Ahmed Shams <AhmedKhattabShams>
Component:	Input/synaptics	Assignee:	Peter Hutterer <peter.hutterer>
Status:	RESOLVED WONTFIX	QA Contact:
Severity:	enhancement
Priority:	medium	CC:	AhmedKhattabShams, peter.hutterer
Version:	unspecified
Hardware:	Other
OS:	Linux (All)
URL:	https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/876447
See Also:	https://launchpad.net/bugs/876447
Whiteboard:
i915 platform:		i915 features:

Description Ahmed Shams 2011-11-30 09:53:43 UTC

On behalf of Matthew Paul Thomas:
Ubuntu 11.04, Ubuntu 11.10

When "Two-finger scrolling" and "Enable horizontal scrolling" are checked in the Touchpad settings, pushing two fingers up and down scrolls vertically, and pushing two fingers left and right scrolls horizontally. This is a good thing.

What is not a good thing is scrolling horizontally while I'm in the middle of scrolling vertically, or scrolling vertically while I'm in the middle of scrolling vertically. That is invariably a mistake, and causes annoying wobbling. https://launchpadlibrarian.net/82846315/out.ogv

This could easily be fixed by ignoring any horizontal movement during a two-finger swipe if started out vertical, and ignoring any vertical movement during a two-finger swipe if it started out horizontal.

Comment 1 Peter Hutterer 2012-03-13 18:45:28 UTC

evdev actually has that feature, could probably port it over or at least take guidance from there.

Comment 2 Peter Hutterer 2012-08-19 23:37:31 UTC

This feature is up for grabs for anyone with enough time.

Feature requirements:
- disable horizontal scrolling while vertical two-finger scrolling is active.
- switch scrolling between vertical and horizontal once the current scrolling speed is minimal
- vertical scrolling should be given preference, in case of ambiguity
- tricky bit: finding out what speed/distance is required to lock in scrolling either way. ideally we do _not_ need extra properties for this
- must not change current behaviour if horizontal scrolling is disabled
- must not change edge scrolling behaviour

Comment 3 sergio 2014-04-04 23:19:18 UTC

This might not look important if you are working with numbers only, but because the view is always snapped to the next column, if your spreadsheet has a half-window wide column, scrolling vertically would make the whole view to JUMP half screen left or right if your two-finger scrolling goes 1px left or right.

Your eyes completely lose track the scrolled content when the jump is so large.
If the "other" scrolled axis can't be prevented (or is a bad idea because you might WANT to scroll diagonally in the table) at least the view shouldn't be strictly snapped to a column, but freely scrolled, allowing partially-shown columns.

This and the snapped-to-page zoom feature are the two biggest turn offs that prevents me to enjoy OpenOffice because it makes it uncontrollable.

Comment 4 Peter Hutterer 2017-03-09 01:09:25 UTC

No-one has taken this up in over 4 years and synaptics is in maintenance mode. Closing as WONTFIX, sorry

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