Plans [was: Re: Gconf or GSettings? - leading to a wider question]

[Linus Torvalds]

On Sun, Jan 20, 2013 at 8:30 PM, Dirk Hohndel <dirk at hohndel.org> wrote:
>
> It /IS/ a feature. Even announced as such:
>
>   Changes in 0.7.3
> ======================
>   * When using the mouse scroll wheel to zoom in, centre on the mouse pointer
>     (as recommended by the HIG)

Oh, I think the HIG is right, it's just that the code is complete and
utter crap.

It *should* center the zoom on the mouse pointer.

But that's not what the osm map scroll-wheel behavior actually does.
If it did, things would be just fine.

So what a mouse-wheel zoom should do is keep the dot under the mouse
pointer stationary. It's easy to test: put the mouse over some random
place (say, Egypt), and then only touch the mouse-wheel. The
(stationary) mouse should stay over Egypt, zooming in and out. That's
what every sane scroll-wheel model does, and I guarantee that that's
what the HIG means.

And the osm widget doesn't do that. I don't have a f*cking clue what
it *does* do, though, although I have a random guess. It does some
entirely odd translation crap. It seems to translate the center of the
map (*NOT* the mouse position) to the geographic location where the
mouse pointer was pointing, which means that the mouse pointer itself
is now over some totally random point of the map. Since you then
continue to zoom in, it now centers the map on that *second* random
point, and then the same thing keeps on happening. End result: you're
in f*cking la-la-land.

Quite frankly, that behavior is just so confused that I don't for a
moment believe that the OSM people really did it intentionally. They
just screwed up. But the fact they clearly can never have tested it at
all doesn't make me get the warm and fuzzies about it all.

And if the OSM people really *did* do it intentionally, and actually
think that that is what the HIG *means*, that says something even
sadder about the whole thing. It means that (a) they didn't understand
the HIG but did it anyway _and_ (b) they must have noticed that the
behavior was insane, but decided that their reading of the HIG must be
correct, and that following the HIG is more important than sanity. So
it would be doubly stupid/sad.

                               Linus