Bug 387363

Summary:	scrollbar preview is useless with normal Qt scrollbar
Product:	[Applications] kate	Reporter:	nfxjfg
Component:	application	Assignee:	KWrite Developers <kwrite-bugs-null>
Status:	RESOLVED FIXED
Severity:	normal	CC:	justin.zobel, kare.sars, nate
Priority:	NOR
Version:	17.08.1
Target Milestone:	---
Platform:	Other
OS:	Linux
Latest Commit:		Version Fixed In:
Sentry Crash Report:

Description nfxjfg 2017-11-27 17:18:08 UTC

When you hover the mouse over the scrollbar of the editing window, you get a nice overlay with a preview of the text at this scroll position.

Unfortunately this is kind of useless: clicking on the scrollbar will scroll it up or down by a page (depending on relative position). You would expect that clicking would make the editor scroll to a position equivalent to the preview, but this doesn't happen.

I'm not sure if this is just an issue with the qt5 style (I'm using "plastique"). But without a way to directly scroll to what the preview shows, the preview is rather an antt-feature.

Comment 1 Nate Graham 2017-11-28 03:31:31 UTC

Are you sure you're using 17.08.1? What you describe was the default behavior (and it bugged me too) in the 16.x versions, but was changed. I see the desired behavior in 17.04.03 as well as 18.03.70 (built from git master). You might also try using the standard Breeze theme and seeing if that fixes it.

Comment 2 nfxjfg 2017-11-28 10:48:41 UTC

The about dialog definitely shows "Kate Version 17.08.1".

I tried unsetting QT_QPA_PLATFORMTHEME (so qt5ct is disabled). I don't know if that's the standard theme, but it has the same problem.

Comment 3 nfxjfg 2017-11-28 10:51:22 UTC

I probably hit send too soon... I actually had to install the "breeze" package, after which qt5ct could select a "breeze" theme. But the scrollbar behavior is unchanged.

Comment 4 Kåre Särs 2017-11-28 11:04:45 UTC

Did I understand that you do _not_ use the mini-map and that what you want is that the "normal" scrollbar also would jump to the clicked location when the overlay is enabled?

Comment 5 nfxjfg 2017-11-28 11:13:47 UTC

That's correct. The minimap is disabled. I prefer it disabled, because it tends not to show any useful information, it just looks clunky, especially since it's wider than the normal scrollbar.

Comment 6 Nate Graham 2017-11-28 14:03:08 UTC

Ah, so you're objecting to the standard behavior of doing page up/page down when clicking in the scroll gutter. I don't like it either. This bug tracks exposing a setting to configure that: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=379498

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 379498 ***

Comment 7 Dominik Haumann 2017-12-03 22:44:39 UTC

In fact, I do not think this is a duplicate: In case of the minimap, you indeed want to jump to the final location. Maybe we should disallow the scrollbar preview if a normal scrollbar is used. This would prevent this usability issue. And then we could also simply jump to the correct location if the minimap is enabled.

Would that be a good solution in your eyes?

Comment 8 Nate Graham 2017-12-03 22:49:08 UTC

That seems sensible enough to me.

Comment 9 Justin Zobel 2020-10-30 03:34:12 UTC

Is this change more of a wishlist item then would you say Nate/Dominik?

Comment 10 Nate Graham 2020-10-30 13:56:46 UTC

When the minimap is disabled, Kate uses the normal Qt scrollbar which respects whatever setting you have set in System Settings > Workspace Behavior > Clicking in scrollbar track.

You can set "Scrolls to the clicked location" if you prefer that behavior (as I do, which is why I eventually implemented this feature).