TLDR:
Add options to:
-Be able to turn off autoscrolling on a per-window and per-application basis.
-Add global shortcut to toggle autoscrolling on and off, or use the status of Scroll Lock to do so.
-Make it possible to rebind autoscrolling from middle click to something else.
The Autoscrolling feature (aka press middle mouse and move to scroll) is simply amazing. It has the potential to revolutionize how we scroll anything on our computers, it feels THAT good to use. Especially for mice with broken scrollwheels, the only alternative is dragging the scroll bar like it’s the 1990’s again. I love it and I want it to be better, HOWEVER…
In its current implementation it’s unusable in a lot of programs. For example:
-Graphical applications like Krita and GIMP, which implement their own middle-click-to-pan behavior, which gets completely broken by this option, because it sends scrolling keystrokes, which zooms the viewport instead, making panning impossible. (it actually works fine in Inkscape for some reason - maybe investigate?)
-3D application like blender and Godot’s 3D scenes, where middle click is used to rotate the camera view, this option again breaks this functionality, making camera navigation in these programs impossible.
-Games where middle click may be used in plethora of ways - as a skill hotkey, for example.
It forces players to rebind it to something else that may be less intuitive and robs them of an important and accessible keybind.
So here is what I propose to fix these issues:
-
Configure the setting on a per-window basis.
There are already so many things you can configure on a per-window or per-application basis in KDE, I was surprised this option wasn’t one of them. -
Make an easy way to switch it on and off via a global hotkey or Scroll Lock.
Having to enter the settings every time you want to switch it on/off is a pain. I propose to use the status of Scroll Lock (with an option to disable the default behaviour of Scroll Lock, which I doubt anyone uses anymore) to turn Autoscrolling on and off, or alternatively be able to bind a global hotkey to toggle it. -
Make it possible to rebind the hotkey that triggers Autoscrolling. It doesn’t have to be middle click - give the users the option to rebind it to anything they want. For example, a lot of (gaming) mice have additional buttons that could serve the purpose perfectly.
If these 3 suggestions were to be implemented, I bet a lot of people would start using autoscrolling, myself included. I really REALLY want to use it, but it breaks so many things that I use and need, and I can’t keep going into the settings to toggle it all the time.