[BRLTTY] key problems on Alva Satellite 544 with brltty 3.7.2

[Dave Mielke]

[quoted lines by Lee Maschmeyer on 2006/10/03 at 09:29 -0400]

>I think requiring the user to modify source to achieve functionality we are 
>used to from other environments is a pretty steep price. 

I agree with you, but I'd like to be convinced that a feature is truly useful
before working on it.

>I'd like to see a switch in Preferences, default it off if you like, to toggle
>horizontal panning since this is what users are used to. 

Users may be used to it, but is it actually a useful feature? Things which
people are used to but which ultimately train bad habits aren't good things.

>if you pan across a 
>screen you can feel dots bounce and then backtrack to see what' there. 

But that's my point. With horizontal panning autorepeating at a fast rate you
can't really tell where you are. You then have to fiddle around quite a bit to
reorient yourself. How is that better, or even the same as, autorepeating the
up or down function, which is predictable, and then doing a manual horizontal
pan, if necessary, to get to where you want to be?

I'm far from one who believes in telling users what they shouldn't want, but,
in this case, it seems that we're being asked to implement a feature, just
because users have become accustomed to having it on another platform, which
encourages a practice which ultimately makes them much less efficient. Maybe
I'm just too slow, or missing something, or whatever. Please help me understand
why autorepeating horizontal panning is a good thing.

Maybe it's just that I don't do much in the way of recreational reading. Is
that where autorepeating panning is useful? When reading literary text I can
understand that sentences can start anywhere so a panning motion may be a
better fit for that paradigm.

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