Bug 470187 - Clarify wording of mouse/touchpad acceleration settings
Summary: Clarify wording of mouse/touchpad acceleration settings
Status: RESOLVED FIXED
Alias: None
Product: systemsettings
Classification: Applications
Component: kcm_mouse (show other bugs)
Version: unspecified
Platform: Other Other
: NOR minor
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Plasma Bugs List
URL:
Keywords: junior-jobs, usability
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2023-05-24 00:29 UTC by tqd8
Modified: 2024-04-08 16:27 UTC (History)
3 users (show)

See Also:
Latest Commit:
Version Fixed In: 6.0
Sentry Crash Report:


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Description tqd8 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 tqd8 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.