GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 557956
middle mouse button drag scrolling inaccessible to tablet users
Last modified: 2011-06-19 10:58:25 UTC
It would be great to be able to set a gconf option to allow the left mouse button to drag scroll. I'm a tablet user and cannot use the middle mouse button (left and right only). Scrolling using the scrollbars is of course possible but this involves a lot of hand movemement when horizontal scrolling becomes necessary (and this is often the case because tablets usually have small screens and thus need high zoom levels) I almost never select text from a PDF, and this could easily be added as a toolbar button which converts the mouse to a 'select tool'. I'm sure this has come up before but the inclusion of such functionality would not produce confusion (as it is hidden) and would provide a very very solid PDF / DjVU reader for tablet / touchscreen users.
*** Bug 557958 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Configure-time option would be welcome.
Apologies for the double submission. I also forgot to add that to my knowledge it is impossible to press both mouse buttons on a tablet at the same time to simmulate a middle click, let alone hold them. (the left mouose button is a tap on the screen while the right mouse button is a switch on the pen plus a tap on the screen)
Thanks a lot
On netbooks with two buttons mouse it is often very difficult to press the buttons simultaneously. Moreover chording is not discoverable by new users. I see a trivial and elegant solution to this problem: drag pages when clicking on blank areas. That will not work with all pdfs of course, but it is an enhancement which is orthogonal to alternative solutions, and would be useful even if we had e.g. chording with the ctrl key.
This functionality is essential for touchscreen interfaces, where touch is identical with left mouse button. It is really necessary for proper user experience on touch devices. Evince is preinstalled as document viewer on MeeGo distribution targeting handsets and netbooks (among other "platforms").
Created attachment 181973 [details] [review] Dirty solution I was tired of waiting for proper solution, so I dig in the code a little and did it myself. I know this solution is dirty, it is hardcoded (switches panning to left button and selecting to middle button) and so on. But I attach the patch that might help other people who want to use evince on touchscreen and don't mind modified packages (I don't think it would become part of the oficial package in this state). If someone wants to clean it up and make it some kind of option, I'd be very happy for it, but I don't have enough time/motivation to do that.
Thanks for the bug report. This particular bug has already been reported into our bug tracking system, but please feel free to report any further bugs you find. *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 165155 ***