Thanks for the background, Dan!

> Scroll bars started on the left in a number of systems at Xerox
> PARC for a very good reason -- namely it is where most of the text
> is when you work with short lines.

	If you're working in certain languages like English, of course, which I
assume PARC was. :)

> From the earliest days, Smalltalk used flop-out scroll-bars to economize
> on screen real estate.  Flop-out scroll bars do not work on the right
> because they obscure the left side of the next pane over, where you do
> all your quick recognition.

	That's very interesting. As someone who does one-hand pointing with the
right hand, with copious screen real estate, the cognitive dissonance of
"reaching over" to the left cancels those benefits for me. It feels as
awkward to me as reaching over something I'm looking at in "real life" with
my arm to manipulate it (but not quite as awkward as this sentence :). I
get a similar feeling of unnecessary occlusion (in real life, my right arm
would be blocking what I'm trying to see). It's almost as bad for me as
using a touch-screen interface where my fingers cover up what I'm trying to
see, in the process of actuation. And I dislike flop-out scrollbars for
several reasons, but that's a different topic. :)

	The irony is that I prefer two-handed interfaces anyway.

> I'm not stuck on left-side scrolling -- I just want you to know the real
history
> and the reasons it has persisted.

	Thanks again! Unfortunately, I think the main reason things persist in
Smalltalk is that there are usually more important things to do, and over
long periods of time they rise above debate. I think scrollbars are a
strong example of this.


-C


--
Craig Latta
composer and computer scientist
craig.latta at netjam.org
www.netjam.org
latta at interval.com
Smalltalkers do: [:it | All with: Class, (And love: it)]