automatic scroll if the end of a document is looked at

[MattisManzel]

Someone writes new text (usually at the end of the page), but as you don't try to scroll all the time you do not realize this. Instead you rest where the end of the page was and do not get that new text is added to it. So: If the page is scrolled to the end and new lines are added there it should automatically scroll down. If you are further up and looking or working on something else it shouldn't do so.

[felipe.sanches@…]

I think that an automatic scroll would be disturbing. It would be better to have visual indication with the name of the other author pointing down. (the same would be usefull for edits above)

[matt.daemon660@…]

Maybe add a button to goto bottom of the page for a quick shortcut to the bottom?

[armin]

So basically there are two cases we can't properly distinguish:

• Users scroll down because they want to follow other user's activities. In that case they want auto-scroll when new lines are added.
• Users scroll down because they want to edit the text near the end of the document. In this case they don't want the document to auto-scroll.

So a possibility might be to only auto-scroll at the end of the document when the user did not write anything for a certain number of seconds. This number can be configurable in the preferences (having a sane default), and is allowed to be 0 (no auto-scroll) and infinity (always auto-scroll).

Another approach can be to wait with this until there is a feature that allows to "follow" other users, which means to automatically scroll so that their cursors are on screen. In this case users can follow others that edit at the end of the document to enable auto-scroll. Note that most infrastructure for the "follow user" feature is already in place, so this is not as much of an effort as it seems.

Actually there is another case which none of the two approaches cover, though: If two users are concurrently editing at the very end of the document, you probably want to auto-scroll if your collaborator adds a new line.

Opinions on this are very welcome.

[matt.daemon660@…]

That does seem pretty hard thinking about it now, but instead i would still just like to see an END button, where i can click. As there have been times when someone copies a 500 line script into my already existing script and i need to goto the end to finish.

That kind of button would be great to have.

Matt.

[armin]

I prefer doing things somewhat right instead of adding dubious UI. Can't you just hold down the pgdown button for half a second, or press ctrl+I and enter a large enough number?