Issue 25483

Summary: Unpredictable vertical scroll jumps when drag and drop of selected text exceeds top or bottom edge of document contents area
Product: Writer Reporter: axs <a.sloman>
Component: uiAssignee: AOO issues mailing list <issues>
Status: CONFIRMED --- QA Contact:
Severity: Normal    
Priority: P3 CC: eric.savary, issues, jeongkyu.kim, Mycapt65, rainerbielefeld_ooo_qa, thomas.lendo
Version: 680m22   
Target Milestone: ---   
Hardware: PC   
OS: All   
Issue Type: DEFECT Latest Confirmation in: 4.1.0-dev
Developer Difficulty: ---
Issue Depends on:    
Issue Blocks: 57891    

Description axs 2004-02-14 03:06:52 UTC
I have found this problem in every version of Openoffice that I have tried, not
just the version selected above, which is the latest I am using.

I hate using a mouse, and like to use arrow keys to move up and down when
reading documents.

Unfortunately at page breaks and paragraph breaks instead of smoothly continuing
across the break the text suddenly jumps so that the eye has to search for the
line that was last being read. This is utterly disconcerting to me, and wastes a
huge amount of time when I am reading a document.

To observe this simply read in any openoffice or word text file then click on
some text to locate the text cursor, and then press the down arrow key. Watch
the text jump as the cursor passes a paragraph or page boundary. See if you can
read anything like that. The same happens with the up arrow key. Contrast the
nice line-at-a-time vertical scrolling if you use the mouse to click on the
arrows at top and bottom of scroll bar.

I presume this jumpting behaviour was put in because someone did not like to see
a small part of the next paragraph or next page as the cursor moves down (or up)
the page. And I suppose some people never notice it because they do everything
with a mouse and you don't get the problem if using the mouse and scroll-bar.

If this discontinuous keyboard-driven vertical motion really is the preferred
behaviour of the majority of non-mouse users, please can it be made switchable
for people who hate it?

I.e. if you pres UP or DOWN arrow you should be able to get the same behaviour
as is already provided by clicking on the arrow at top or bottom of the scroll
bar. My hunch is that most people would prefer that to be the default for arrow
keys also, but even if I am wrong, at least people who want it should have it as
an option.

many thanks.
Aaron
==
Aaron Sloman
www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~axs
Comment 1 jack.warchold 2004-02-17 17:36:27 UTC
set issuetype to enhancement because this ist not realy a bug
set OS to all
reassigned to the owner of enhancement bugs

set default target
Comment 2 pesala 2006-08-26 07:36:01 UTC
Though I can see that this is an important issue for some users, I think that the 
way to solve it is the implement a Normal Mode for proof-reading rather than 
spending developers' time on adding an option to change this behaviour. 

When scrolling from the bottom of one page to the top of the next in page layout 
mode, where there is a gap to show the page break, the page is going to have to 
jump by several lines, espcially if there are footnotes at the bottom of the 
previous page, and a header at the top of the next page. 
Comment 3 siduri 2006-08-26 07:55:24 UTC
Comment to Pesala's comment:
This is what i thought at first, but if you open a file and try to scroll with 
the arrows you will see that it's not at the bottom of the PAGE that it jumps, 
but at the bottom of the SCREEN.  Normal mode is ALSO necessary to make the 
cursor more directly under the control of the arrow keys but not sufficient.  
Comment 4 burg1 2006-12-18 12:32:49 UTC
Issue 5401 is a duplicate - but I don't know how to actually mark it as a 
duplicate, so please can somebody else do it! ;-)
Comment 5 bettina.haberer 2007-09-26 16:01:34 UTC
Hi Mathias, I have changed the current owner to your owner. Please take the
ownership of these enhancements.
Comment 6 liquidat 2008-03-05 10:41:07 UTC
Anything new?
Comment 7 rblevin 2008-03-05 14:51:52 UTC
I am a professional writer with several books to my name under major imprints. 
Have also written for major tech publications and many of the top tech vendors.
 I use OpenOffice exclusively, and I know other professional writers who have or
are making the switch.  OpenOffice is that good.

However, I have to say this "page leaping" problem is the single most annoying
habit of the program.  It's also a productivity impediment.  When editing large
documents, it's nearly impossible to manage formatting and keep your context. 
The human brain gets confused when the page leaps up, and the text your were
working on suddenly disappears.

It wouldn't be so bad if the page lept up or down consistently and logically,
but it doesn't.  You lose the insertion point.  It's a mess.

As a former developer, I can say with confidence there is no technical reason
why page scrolling should not +always+ be smooth, regardless of the
application's "mode."  This is a bug, not a feature.

Competitively speaking, every other text editor and word processor on the market
today is capable of moving text up or down one line at a time, including when
crossing page breaks.

This is a bug that should be fixed, and could be fixed with a few minutes attention.
Comment 8 axs 2008-03-05 15:31:58 UTC
I completely agree with rblevin that this is a serious bug. Fortunately it does
not bother me much because I hardly ever use OO, except to read things sent to
me, and I immediately convert to PDF and read using xpdf which does not have
this problem. For producing my own documents I use latex.

I did recently have to convert a latex document to word because of restrictions
of an incompetent publisher, and once again found this jumping behaviour when
using the 'up' or 'down' arrow key very annoying i.e. whenever the text cursor
hits the top or bottom of the window the next keypress causes the text to jump
several lines, losing the visual context. I can't imagine who ever wanted that
sort of behaviour.

Fortunately I found that using the scroll wheel on the mouse did not produce
that behaviour, and that is much less tiring (and rsi-inducing?) than constantly
clicking on the arrows at top or bottom of scroll bar which also avoids the
jumping. But I would prefer not to have to touch the mouse to get sensible
text-scrolling behaviour.

I feel very sorry for people who can't use other text processing systems instead
of OO. (I have no idea whether this is also in MSword: I have never used that,
as I use only linux and unix.)

Since there are already two mechanisms that produce the right behaviour it
should be trivial to fix the bug. perhaps users who want the jumping behaviour
shuld be able to turn it on (are there any??). Or at least enable other users to
turn it off.

Aaron
(Using OO 2.3.1 on Linux+PC)



Comment 9 rblevin 2008-03-05 21:03:45 UTC
axs makes an intersting observation that proves this is a bug:

>>> Fortunately I found that
>>> using the scroll wheel
>>> on the mouse did not
>>> produce that behaviour

The scrolling behavior can and should be the same, regardless of the input
device.  Simply use the mouse-wheel code with the keyboard, or eliminate this
duality altogether by consolidating the scrolling routine.
Comment 10 pmike 2008-08-21 19:27:58 UTC
In addition to be "smooth", auto-scroll should have speed depending on mouse
vertical bias from document (thus allows slow and fast scrolling).

Also please assign target milestone for this issue.
Comment 11 Mathias_Bauer 2008-09-01 11:48:48 UTC
I changed the target to "3.x" to get it into the quarterly review process.
Comment 12 leolo 2008-10-12 20:51:31 UTC
I have registered just to vote for this. I'm unable to migrate to OpenOffice
until this issue is resolved. It's really a deal breaker for me (and also for
all of my work colleagues). We do a lot of typing and almost never use the
mouse. Proper keyboard scrolling is a must for our type of work.

Regards.
Comment 13 franklekens 2009-03-11 16:17:11 UTC
I agree that this is annoying.

Also, I'm not entirely sure this is the same or a related phenomenon. But when
reading through a large text, the mouse navigation also has annoying effects. If
I click at the top or bottom line in my screen, and that line does not coincide
with the top or bottom of a page, instead of moving the cursor to that line, the
text is scrolled to display part of the previous or subsequent text (as
described in the original post, I think).

This is hugely annoying if all you wanted to do was double-click a word in the
top or bottom line of your screen to select it. Instead of selecting that word,
the text gets scrolled, and an entirely different word gets selected. 

As I said, I'm not entirely sure this is the same phenomenon. Hard to describe
these effects in text - easier just to show someone IRL.
Comment 14 sakoch 2010-01-06 15:47:29 UTC
Ditto this problem. But I see it using a mouse. When scrolling with the wheel
mouse or holding the scroll bar, the view will sometimes jump back to the page
you were typing on rather than stay on the new page you were trying to view. You
have to quick click in the text frame to secure the page view. It seems to
happen after typing in one section for awhile. If you load a document and start
scrolling through, you don't seem to get this behavior. (WinXP Pro, SP2, w/ most
updates, default page view)
Comment 15 martyn01 2011-01-24 17:36:19 UTC
May I ask if the original issue - use arrow keys to move up and down through
documents causes disconcerting jumps - will ever be addressed?

Comment 16 eric.savary 2011-01-25 12:31:00 UTC
@All: what about checking "Tools - Options - OpenOffice.org
Writer/OpenOffice.org Writer/Web - View - Smooth scroll"?
Comment 17 martyn01 2011-01-25 16:45:54 UTC
@es: Nope, regrettably enabling smooth scrolling has nothing to do with the
problem. It's the way a document scrolls a number of lines at a time, rather
than one, when navigating it using the up and down arrow keys that's
infuriating. Not only is it illogical, it's also difficult to focus on the line
that you need to be looking at when things are jumping around!
Comment 18 axs 2011-01-25 18:05:11 UTC
martyn01 wrote: 

     "enabling smooth scrolling has nothing to do with the problem."

right!

     "It's the way a document scrolls a number of lines at a time, rather than
     one, when navigating it using the up and down arrow keys that's
     infuriating."

Yes.

To be more precise: there are configurations where pressing up or down arrow key 
does not behave like mouse clicking at top or bottom of scroll bar (which 
behaves correctly) but instead using the arrow key moves the text and mouse 
cursor a much larger, unpredictable amount, requiring visual search to sort out 
what has happened.

I suspect that at some distant past time a clever programmer with little 
understanding of human interface issues thought that would be a useful facility 
and went to some trouble to insert it, without making it an option that can be 
turned off.

I can't see any reason for breaking the tight correspondence between the good 
behaviour produced by using mouse at top or bottom of scroll bar, and using Up 
and Down arrow keys. (Probably most users use mouse only and so never complain 
about this behaviour.)

There should always be a keyboard-only alternative to something that can be done 
with the mouse. I suspect that in this case restoring the correspondence should 
be trivial (replacing one function call by another that is already in use, 
namely move text cursor up or down one line, and if necessary bring the new line 
(and NOTHING MORE) onto the screen.

If the text pointer moves onto a footnote just bring that line up anyway -- 
don't try to be clever and jump over the footnote (as suggested by Pesala in 
2006!). If the new line is blank, just show the new blank line, and let the user 
decide what to do next.

Providing an option that prevents scrolling off one page onto another as some 
PDF viewers do is another matter. Then moving to the next or previous page would 
be a different action (e.g. PageUp or PageDown). But for 'continuous' scrolling, 
don't insert discontinuities.

This is not revolutionary stuff: it's what OO does with mouse and scroll wheel 
actions anyway, and every other text editor I have used also does.

So, let's please have it with arrow keys also.

Thanks.


Not only is it illogical, it's also difficult to focus on the line
that you need to be looking at when things are jumping around!
Comment 19 grinderx 2011-02-14 09:55:00 UTC
The issue type should really be a BUG, not an enhancement. For god's sake, 
Writer is a word processor therefore one would expect to be able to work 
with such an application using keyboard only, or at least without the need 
to reach for a mouse in order to scroll text line by line.
Regards.
Comment 20 Rainer Bielefeld 2014-01-16 06:14:17 UTC
*** Issue 124031 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***
Comment 21 Rainer Bielefeld 2014-01-16 06:23:28 UTC
Please see some detailed comments at <https://issues.apache.org/ooo/show_bug.cgi?id=124031#c1>

Might have been an enhancement 2000, but for 2014 software it's a bug.
Comment 22 Rainer Bielefeld 2014-01-18 16:56:10 UTC
But not a major one, cut/past is not unreasonable.
Comment 23 Marcus 2017-05-20 10:45:15 UTC
Reset the assignee to the default "issues@openoffice.apache.org".