Re: Gtk scrollbar: thumb too short

[Stefan Monnier]

> Two applications, Emacs and PixelStuff start out with exactly one
> window height (say sixty lines) full of stuff.  Both allow
> overscrolling to put the last line at the top.  In Emacs, the thumb
> covers the entire length of the scrollbar, because all text is
> visible, in PixelStuff it covers approximately half (60/119) of the
> scrollbar.

I.e. the PixelStuff behavior is the Emacs/Motif behavior.
I've been using it for a while and I must say even though one
gets used to it, I don't like it.  The problem is that the visual
appearance of the scrollbar doesn't tell you clearly when point-max
is visible so I still often end up trying to scroll down
(especially in Gnus for some reason) and feel silly when I discover
that there's nothing more to scroll.

I've now switched to the new behavior I suggest (i.e. revert
to the native scrollbar behavior) but work around the problematic
interaction with Motif's scrollbar (the same problem as with Xaw3d
and GTK) by setting the thumb size to 0 while dragging it: it's
not perfect, but I find it much more useful.


        Stefan