Naturalscrolling is not working everywhere

[zedtux]

This issue has been reported by email first (from Rainer Rohde), and today I'm encountering it myself.

I've upgraded my Ubuntu box to the Ubuntu precise 12.04 version, and naturalscrolling work only in Firefox, but nowhere else.
That's mean manipulating with xinput the mouse button mapping is no more enough.

Here is the original email from Rainer Rohde:

Hi there,

I really enjoy naturallscrolling on Ubuntu. With the latest update,
however, I noticed that it only works when browsing the web; it does not
work when browsing inside Nautilus within the local file-system.

Is there any way that naturallscrolling works across the board the the
selected input device?

I would like to have my touch pad scroll the "natural way", just like in
MacOS Lion, regardless whether I use a web-browser or a file-browser,
while my optional USB mouse should behave the traditional way across the
board...

Thanks for your consideration.

Yours truly,
Rainer

"In the end, what we regret most are the chances we never took."
~Frasier Crane

"Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, the mind can achieve."
~Napoleon Hill

[cemmanouilidis]

Hi,

That's really strange. I don't see any reason that would explain this behaviour

Am 17.03.2012 um 13:29 schrieb Guillaume Hain
reply@reply.github.com:

This issue has been reported by email first (from Rainer Rohde), and today I'm encountering it myself.

I've upgraded my Ubuntu box to the Ubuntu precise 12.04 version, and naturalscrolling work only in Firefox, but nowhere else.
That's mean manipulating with xinput the mouse button mapping is no more enough.

Here is the original email from Rainer Rohde:

Hi there,

I really enjoy naturallscrolling on Ubuntu. With the latest update,
however, I noticed that it only works when browsing the web; it does not
work when browsing inside Nautilus within the local file-system.

Is there any way that naturallscrolling works across the board the the
selected input device?

I would like to have my touch pad scroll the "natural way", just like in
MacOS Lion, regardless whether I use a web-browser or a file-browser,
while my optional USB mouse should behave the traditional way across the
board...

Thanks for your consideration.

Yours truly,
Rainer

"In the end, what we regret most are the chances we never took."
~Frasier Crane

"Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, the mind can achieve."
~Napoleon Hill

---

Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub:
#28

[pythonpro]

Hi.
naturalscrolling 0.3.1 works fine in all distros with all my mice, while the current trank is very very buggy. Looks like all changes since 0.3.1 were in wrong direction...

[cemmanouilidis]

I agree with pythonpro,

there are way too many issues in the current branch.
We will review the code in order to get naturalscrolling stable again!

[zedtux]

Agree too.

But the result should be the same as the way it is working still the same: Use xinput in order to reverse some keys.
I will publish 2 packages if you agree @cemmanouilidis:

• naturalscrolling: 0.4.1 version (Many people said that this version works fine)
• naturalscrolling-testing: With the current version (the buggy one)

Keep in mind that the xinput is usable only in one way. And this hasn't changed.
There are some window where naturalscrolling is not working and some where it's working.
I'm suspecting Canonical or GNOME to change the behavior of some widgets, that for example firefox is not using where naturalscrolling is working.

I will try to download some other Linux distributions in order to test the master branch version and also different version of Ubuntu (in order to have different version of GNOME).

[zedtux]

In order to centralize all our tests, I've created a new page in the wiki.

Please @cemmanouilidis if you tested something, update the wiki, and for @ALL send us your tests results.

[zedtux]

I would like to focus you to https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xserver-xorg-input-evdev/+bug/932439

[zedtux]

Little update: Now in the latest version of Ubuntu 12.04 Terminal is working back! Now only Nautilus and Gedit are not working.

[mjumbewu]

I just encountered this myself. Seems like it's related to the smooth-scrolling updates in Gnome. Gedit and nautilus both have smooth-scrolling and do not work with naturalscrolling. The terminal seems not to have smooth scrolling, but does work with naturalscrolling.

[zedtux]

I agree with you.

But I have no idea where I can find some documentation about this smooth-scrolling and how to implement it in NaturalScrolling.

[zedtux]

I've just read this article: http://www.linuxbsdos.com/2012/04/27/whats-the-point-of-having-2-scrollbar-types-in-ubuntu-12-04/

I'll try to remove the package liboverlay-scrollbar to check if it fix or not the issue.

[cemmanouilidis]

just discovered this bug report:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gtk+3.0/+bug/966237

seems that this guy has the same issue with natural scolling behaviour,
activated through .Xmodmap

2012/4/27 Guillaume Hain <
reply@reply.github.com

I've just read this article:
http://www.linuxbsdos.com/2012/04/27/whats-the-point-of-having-2-scrollbar-types-in-ubuntu-12-04/

I'll try to remove the package liboverlay-scrollbar to check if it fix
or not the issue.

---

Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub:

#28 (comment)

[zedtux]

Nice! Seems close to our issue!

That means that the bug should be the same for older version of Natural Scrolling.

[mjumbewu]

Some helpful info from the Gnome bug report: according to https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=674716#c5 and http://who-t.blogspot.com.au/2011/09/natural-scrolling-in-synaptics-driver.html, smooth scrolling is configured with a different xinput value in the latest versions of x.org. Seems fairly straightforward too -- set negative values for scrolling distance instead of positive. That's the good news!

The less-good news (at least for me) is that setting negative values for scrolling distance is supported since the synaptics driver version 1.5.99.903, and the latest version of the driver in the Ubuntu 12.04 repos is 1.5.99.902:

apt-cache showpkg xserver-xorg-input-synaptics

[zedtux]

Before anything else, thank you @mjumbewu for your investigations.

I've carefully checked all your links and your explanation.
This means that NaturalScrolling will not be fully usable under Ubuntu 12.04... and for 11.10 maybe forcing a version of the right package (xserver-xorg-input-synaptics ?) could fix it.
And then, in Ubuntu 12.10 NaturalScrolling will fully work (after having implemented the new behavior).

In the other hand, about Ubuntu 12.04, it could maybe exists a PPA with the synaptics driver version 1.5.99.903...

Update: After a quick search, there's no PPA with synaptics driver version 1.5.99.903 today.

[zedtux]

I found this today: https://code.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-branches/ubuntu/precise/xserver-xorg-input-synaptics/precise-proposed

This could help a lot of it is accepted!

[stevenroose]

One guy wrote a guide to get natural scrolling working system-wide (also in Nautilus, ... which the Natural Scrolling app currently does not): http://andym3.wordpress.com/2012/05/27/fixing-natural-scrolling-in-ubuntu-12-04/
Please implement this in the app as well :)

[zedtux]

I had a look at this article.
I have tried it and it's not working. When I do the following command:

xinput list-props 8 | grep "Scrolling Distance"

I have no result...

[zedtux]

@stevenroose, @mjumbewu, @cemmanouilidis, and @pythonpro: Could you please post the version of Ubuntu you're using and a Gist with the output of the following command:

xinput list-props device_id

(Replacing device_id with the one of your mouse)

[mjumbewu]

@zedtux https://gist.github.com/3614854 hope it helps.

[zedtux]

@mjumbewu Which is the version of Ubuntu are you running?
I'm having a different output!

[mjumbewu]

@zedtux weird.

Ubuntu Release 12.04 (precise) 64-bit
Kernel Linux 3.2.0-29-generic
GNOME 3.4.2

[zedtux]

@mjumbewu Which is the version of xserver-xorg-input-synaptics are you using?

[stevenroose]

Natural scrolling does not work is most core Ubuntu apps. I have a MacBook Pro touchpad (listed "bcm5974") and a Logitech mouse. I run the latest Ubuntu 12.04. Here are the gists for both devices respectively: bcm5974 and Logitech mouse.

[zedtux]

I can't understand why I don't have this Scrolling Distance...

$ cat /etc/lsb-release
DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu
DISTRIB_RELEASE=12.10
DISTRIB_CODENAME=quantal
DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu 12.10"
$ xinput list | grep Mouse
3:⎜   ↳ Logitech USB Laser Mouse                    id=8    [slave  pointer  (2)]
$ xinput list-props 8 | grep "Scrolling Distance"
$

And the version of my xserver-xorg-input-synaptics package is 1.6.2-1ubuntu5.

Edit:

In order to be sure that the issue is not due to a bad installation of Ubuntu on my machine, I downloaded the iso of Ubuntu 12.10 and installed it into a VirtualBox instance and try the same commands.
I got the same result.. no Scrolling Distance in the properties list.

[zedtux]

@mjumbewu when I'm now looking at the version of the xserver-xorg-input-synaptics package I see version 1.6.2-1ubuntu5.

When I'm looking at xinput list-props 10 (10 is the id of my mouse), I still has no Scrolling Distance property.
But I have the following (notice the strange output of Button properties):

$ xinput list-props 10
Device 'Logitech USB Laser Mouse':
Device Enabled (142):   1
Coordinate Transformation Matrix (144): 1.000000, 0.000000, 0.000000, 0.000000, 1.000000, 0.000000, 0.000000, 0.000000, 1.000000
Device Accel Profile (271): 0
Device Accel Constant Deceleration (272):   1.000000
Device Accel Adaptive Deceleration (273):   1.000000
Device Accel Velocity Scaling (274):    10.000000
Device Product ID (260):    1133, 49257
Device Node (261):  "/dev/input/event4"
Evdev Axis Inversion (275): 0, 0
Evdev Axes Swap (277):  0
Axis Labels (278):  "Rel X" (152), "Rel Y" (153), "Rel Horiz Wheel" (269), "Rel Vert Wheel" (270)
Button Labels (279):    "Button Left" (145), "Button Middle" (146), "Button Right" (147), "Button Wheel Up" (148), "Button Wheel Down" (149), "Button Horiz Wheel Left" (150), "Button Horiz Wheel Right" (151), "Button Side" (264), "Button Extra" (265), "Button Forward" (266), "Button Back" (267), "Button Task" (268), "Button Unknown" (263), "Button Unknown" (263), "Button Unknown" (263), "Button Unknown" (263)
Evdev Middle Button Emulation (280):    0
Evdev Middle Button Timeout (281):  50
Evdev Third Button Emulation (282): 0
Evdev Third Button Emulation Timeout (283): 1000
Evdev Third Button Emulation Button (284):  3
Evdev Third Button Emulation Threshold (285):   20
Evdev Wheel Emulation (286):    0
Evdev Wheel Emulation Axes (287):   0, 0, 4, 5
Evdev Wheel Emulation Inertia (288):    10
Evdev Wheel Emulation Timeout (289):    200
Evdev Wheel Emulation Button (290): 4
Evdev Drag Lock Buttons (291):  0

Could you please tell me which version of the xserver-xorg-input-synaptics package do you have and if the output of the xinput list-props <device_id> is still like in your comment from 5 months ago or if you have something similar to mien ?

[mjumbewu]

Hey @zedtux, I actually got a new computer since then. Still though, the same issues persist. I have the same version of xserver-xorg-input-synaptics as you, and I put the output from my touchpad at https://gist.github.com/4667649