Hacker News Reader

Comment by stephen | Hacker News Reader

I know trackpads won, but would love a trackpoint. I keep buying Thinkpads solely for that feature.

How do I scroll a page up and down with a trackpoint (on Windows and Linux)? I've tried using a trackpoint, but the two-finger swipe up and down on a trackpad is a convenience that I cannot seem to live without.

there’s a scroll button iirc. You hold it down, and the trackpoint scrolls instead of moving the cursor.

Sure! I'm typing on this USB keyboard:

https://www.amazon.com/Lenovo-ThinkPad-Compact-Keyboard-Trac...

And to scroll I press the middle blue button (below space bar), and then push the trackpoint stick up/down. The mouse cursor doesn't move, and instead the OS just scrolls the window.

(Fwiw I'm on Linux and this behavior just worked out of the box, for both my generic desktop w/this keyboard & Thinkpad laptop.)

Obligatory fanboy note, while performing this scroll action, I only have to move my thumb ~0.5" off the space bar, and my pointer finger ~1" off "j". So there is very little physical movement required to scroll (or click), vs. moving your whole palm up & down ~6" to the trackpad.

Hmm, the middle mouse button is bound to "paste text from buffer" on Linux (probably X11 more accurately), so I keep pasting random text into the edit box or terminal window. And if I click on that middle button, then change my mind about scrolling the window, then release that button, it pastes the buffer. It looks like I have to move the trackpoint just slightly to change my mind

I don't know. Maybe people can be trained to workaround all this, but it seems very fragile and unintuitive to me. If there was a way to bind the middle button to one of the modifier keys (e.g. Alt, Ctrl, Shift, Fn, Super/Window), I can see that being a better UX. Then I can hit the modifier key, then change my mind without affecting anything.

I don't use the trackpoint often on my ThinkPad, but I wouldn't buy a laptop without it. It's impossible to use the touchpad in a confined space such as an airplane (economy class) or a bus.

Same for me, but I can understand if it is hard to implement in the current design.

same for me

Reply on news.ycombinator.com