Stop weird scrolling behaviour in "Compare versions"

Question

I use the tool “Compare versions” to view changes in the project’s text. It is useful. However, I have noticed this weird scrolling behaviour. If I click on a word or select text in the “Compare Versions” tool, the window is scrolled. This is unexpected behaviour and it makes this tool harder to use. I spend several seconds (what feels like 30 seconds) looking for the word that I intended to click on, as it has suddenly changed position on the screen.

I expected scrolling to work like Notepad, or Edge, or Word. Clicking on a word in these programs does not cause any scrolling to happen. Scrolling happens by manipulating the scrollbar, by using the arrow keys, or by entering new text that requires scrolling in order for the new text to be displayed.

How do I stop scrolling from happening just by clicking on a word in the “Compare Versions” tool?

Thanks for the help!

Answer 1

It looks like both of these issues are caused by the same general behavior. The tool is designed such that when you click a new verse, it refreshes, putting that verse at the top of the page and putting the cursor at the beginning of that verse. This causes the sudden change of positions. And if you use the right and left arrow keys and cross into a new verse, it waits until you pause briefly before performing this same sort of refresh. This same behavior happens whether or not you’re in 2-pane view.

I’m guessing that one reason this was seen as desirable is that usually this tool is used with 2-pane view, and you generally want both panes to line up, in order to make comparisons.

But it seems reasonable to me to request an additional toggle in the menu which would let you turn off the behavior which causes the selected verse to jump to the top of the page, which differs from normal PT windows.

As you implied, it would be nice if the cursor position was not forgotten when this refresh happens. A related quality of life feature would be to delay the jumping behavior (refreshing newly selected verses to the top of the page) while highlighting text. Currently, if you try to highlight text in a verse which is not the current verse, the refreshing behavior causes the window to shift, and your highlighting is ignored and the cursor moves to the beginning of the selected verse. If the refreshing behavior was delayed until after the selection was made, and if the cursor retained your selection, you could use that to reduce the time it takes you to figure out where you were looking before the jump happened.

Comments

Thanks @Stephen+Katt . Your reply makes sense. I wonder if there is a way of improving the UX of this tool without adding an additional toggle in the menu, and while eliminating the delay altogether. I’m a developer myself, and I can’t resist speccing a fix. But I know it can be annoying to get outsiders to write up feature suggestions, so if this is not useful, please ignore it, I understand.

Here is what I would suggest (some of which you already said):

• For the pane or the window in focus, make sure that the scrolling position and the cursor position never changes (except in the ways that you would expect it to change as in a normal text editor, for example, when scrolling the mouse wheel, pressing arrow keys, etc). This should be the case whether two-pane is enabled or not.
• When the cursor changes verse, adjust the scroll position of the other pane (in two-pane mode). Also adjust the scroll position of the main window. The important thing is that whatever is in focus does not get adjusted. The scrolling of the second pane should adjust in such a fashion so that the verses line up.
• Don’t automatically change the cursor position. No delay is needed, adjust the scrolling position of the other pane immediately, (if feasible to implement).
• No need for any new setting or new toggle button.

This behaviour matches how grouped windows in the normal windows already behave. So I think it should be quite intuitive to the user.

Answer 2

Also, when scrolling using the left and right arrow keys ← and →, I’ve noticed the following annoying behaviour which I would like to disable. If I move the cursor into the middle of a verse using the rigth or left arrow keys, and wait a second or two, the cursor is automatically moved to the beginning of the verse. This makes editing really difficult in two-pane view.

Comments

bit:

This makes editing really difficult in two-pane view.

I didn’t think editing was possible in the Compare Versions window.

---

It is, but only in two-pane mode in the panel representing the current version.

Answer 3

I agree that the jumping around is a nuisance in the Compare Versions window. I like bit’s suggestion for improvement.

Answer 4

Oh, interesting. Editing wasn’t working in a Compare Versions window that I had open… but some experiments reveal that it can only be edited in the left-hand pane. This could be useful to know about!