Bug 470187

Summary:	Clarify wording of mouse/touchpad acceleration settings
Product:	[Applications] systemsettings	Reporter:	tempqd <variable_valuables761>
Component:	kcm_mouse	Assignee:	Plasma Bugs List <plasma-bugs-null>
Status:	RESOLVED FIXED
Severity:	minor	CC:	eugene.savitsky, natalie_clarius, nate
Priority:	NOR	Keywords:	junior-jobs, usability
Version First Reported In:	unspecified
Target Milestone:	---
Platform:	Other
OS:	Other
Latest Commit:		Version Fixed/Implemented In:	6.0
Sentry Crash Report:

Description tempqd 2023-05-24 00:29:10 UTC

SUMMARY

The wording of "flat" and "adaptive" (and "acceleration profile" itself) seems unclear and perhaps overly technical.

Plus, the word "adaptive" nowadays sounds more like it will learn from how you use the mouse and adapt itself over time, in a machine-learning sense. Or, it sounds like perhaps it will adapt based on the context your pointer is in, i.e. different applications will have different pointer behavior. What it really means is that there is simply acceleration.

Calling it a "profile" and having the radio buttons with two options below the pointer speed bar also makes it seem like the choice will determine how the speed bar behaves. To me, "adaptive profile" seems like the bar will set how adaptive the acceleration is (which is not how it works, I don't think), especially in the touchpad settings where the bar is labeled "pointer acceleration" (should be labeled speed, I assume).

I might suggest a simple toggle switch, "Acceleration: on/off".

The hover (or perhaps an [i]) tooltip wording here (seemingly only in touchpad settings, by the way) would be trickier with only one on/off choice. In general the distinction between speed (velocity) and acceleration of the pointer is muddy when the user is constantly changing the pointer's speed themselves by moving their real-life mouse/finger at different speeds. So, maybe a better term than "acceleration" is possible here, like "boost" or "thrust" or something?


OS: openSUSE Tumbleweed, latest snapshot

Comment 1 Nate Graham 2023-05-24 17:45:51 UTC

This might make sense if there were no "custom acceleration profile" feature, but now there is, and IMO we can disambiguate this by adding support for it.

Until that happens, perhaps it could simply be rephrased as follows:

> Pointer acceleration: (O) Standard
>                       ( ) None

And then once we implement the custom acceleration profile feature, it would look like this:

> Pointer acceleration: (O) Standard
>                       ( ) None
>                       ( ) [ Customize... ]

Comment 2 tempqd 2023-05-24 18:15:31 UTC

(In reply to Nate Graham from comment #1)
> > Pointer acceleration: (O) Standard
> >                       ( ) None
> >                       ( ) [ Customize... ]

That layout looks great to me. Custom acceleration sounds cool!

Should I make a new bug report for the inconsistencies between mouse & touchpad settings (slider label and spinbox), or is this intended?

Comment 3 Nate Graham 2023-05-26 14:18:25 UTC

Inconsistencies are generally not intentional unless they represent real differences in hardware support. But the most obvious difference of the spinbox being missing on the mouse KCM is known and tracked with Bug 431751.

Comment 4 Bug Janitor Service 2023-06-23 23:42:36 UTC

A possibly relevant merge request was started @ https://invent.kde.org/plasma/plasma-desktop/-/merge_requests/1589

Comment 5 Nate Graham 2023-08-23 21:42:07 UTC

Git commit 4ef30aeb1161a989b3d21b01a928ac037b31c34b by Nate Graham, on behalf of Tem PQD.
Committed on 23/08/2023 at 23:41.
Pushed by ngraham into branch 'master'.

kcm/{mouse,touchpad}: Relabel "Pointer acceleration" sliders to "Pointer speed"

This is more natural language.

M  +2    -2    doc/kcontrol/kcmaccess/index.docbook
M  +2    -2    doc/kcontrol/mouse/index.docbook
M  +1    -1    kcms/access/ui/MouseNavigation.qml
M  +3    -3    kcms/mouse/kcm/libinput/main.qml
M  +3    -3    kcms/mouse/kcm/libinput/main_deviceless.qml
M  +4    -4    kcms/touchpad/kcm/libinput/touchpad.qml

https://invent.kde.org/plasma/plasma-desktop/-/commit/4ef30aeb1161a989b3d21b01a928ac037b31c34b

Comment 6 Eugene Savitsky 2024-04-07 19:11:43 UTC

There is no customization for acceleration in KDE 6.0.x. Was it removed intentionally?

Just wanted to suggest adding this option, for my taste the default acceleration is too lazy...

Comment 7 Eugene Savitsky 2024-04-07 19:20:39 UTC

BTW the initial bug request is done, now it is:

> Pointer acceleration: (O) Standard
>                                       ( ) None

Bug should be closed?

Comment 8 Nate Graham 2024-04-08 16:27:24 UTC

Yes, this is done now. User-customizable acceleration profiles still need to be done though. That's tracked separately.