"Enable horizontal scrolling" doesn't work with "Reverse scroll direction"

[Ben James]

Summary:

The direction of horizontal scrolling isn't affected by "Reverse scrolling direction"

How to reproduce:

1) Open touchpad settings - Menu | Settings | Mouse and Touchpad
2) Enable horizontal scrolling - Touchpad | Enable horizontal scrolling
3) Invert scrolling direction* - Buttons and feedback | Reverse scroll direction

Expected behaviour:

The horizontal scrolling direction should be inverted - i.e. swiping two fingers from left to right should cause the window content to move from left to right - i.e. "natural scrolling".

Justification:

There are two logical scrolling modes:

1) The touchpad moves the viewport (and window content remains static) - this is the classic Windows behaviour; dragging a vertical scrollbar downwards gives the impression that the window content moves upwards (i.e. the view moves downwards and the window content does not move). This shall be known as "viewport control".

2) The touchpad moves window content (and the viewport remains static) - this is the modern OSX behaviour; swiping down gives the impression that the window content also moves downwards (i.e. the window content moves down and the viewport does not move). This shall be known as "page control".

When enabling both of the above settings ("Enable horizontal scrolling" and "Reverse scroll direction"), the behaviour is "page control" on the vertical axis, but "viewport control" on the horizontal axis - this is really uncomfortable/counter-intuitive.

To summarize - the "Reverse scroll direction" has no effect on the horizontal axis.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 14.10
Package: xfce4-settings 4.11.3-0ubuntu2
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.16.0-29.39-generic 3.16.7-ckt2
Uname: Linux 3.16.0-29-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.14.7-0ubuntu8.1
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: XFCE
Date: Sat Jan 10 21:49:22 2015
ExecutablePath: /usr/bin/xfce4-mouse-settings
InstallationDate: Installed on 2015-01-10 (0 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Xubuntu 14.10 "Utopic Unicorn" - Release amd64 (20141022.1)
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=en_GB:en
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=<set>
 LANG=en_GB.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: xfce4-settings
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[David Schneider (dnschneid)]

Enabling reverse scrolling doesn't reverse the direction of horizontal scrolling.

Intuitively, the setting should reverse both axes.

[8-nick (8-nick)]

Why? for vertical its to simulate natural scrolling. For horizontal I don't see the advantage..

[David Schneider (dnschneid)]

It's the same reason. "Natural" scrolling is that you're pushing the page around, similar to a phone or tablet. You can push it horizontally as well as vertically.

[Razzintown (razzintown)]

This bug is not a matter of 'advantage' or opinion. If you scroll left on your touchscreen with your finger, you do not expect the panel to move right. You expect it to follow your finger (hence "natural").
This bug is still not fixed.

[Razzintown (razzintown)]

Workaround: echo 'pointer = 1 2 3 5 4 7 6 8 9 10 11 12' > .Xmodmap

[Ben James (ben-c-james)]

> cd ~
> echo 'pointer = 1 2 3 5 4 7 6 8 9 10 11 12' > .Xmodmap

The workaround didn't work for me - it caused exactly the opposite behaviour (i.e. horizontal scrolling behaviour fixed - natural scrolling - but vertical now the opposite - "normal" scrolling).

[Ben James (ben-c-james)]

Apologies - when applying the work-around, one also has to disable the "Reverse direction of scrolling" option in the trackpad settings.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Michael MacEachern (maceach-b)]

This bug affects me too. In Ubuntu's Unity and Apples OS X, they get the natural touchpad directions right. Xfce doing it on just one axes is throwing me off, and frankly, giving me a headache.

[rubo77 (rubo77)]

This workaround works for me:

echo 'pointer = 1 2 3 4 5 7 6 8 9 10 11 12' >> .Xmodmap
xmodmap .Xmodmap

[Marek Matej (marekmatej)]

The reverse scroll direction feature works well for me until the recent update (3/2016). Agreed that it should work in both vertical and horizontal direction. The ".Xmodmap" workaround did not work for me. Using Calculate Linux (Gentoo).

[Hong Xu (xuhdev)]

This bug is still affecting in Xfce 4.12.

[dinar qurbanov (qdinar)]

in debian 10, i solved this and bug #11193 running
nano /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/40-libinput.conf
man libinput

[Theo Linkspfeifer (lastonestanding)]

*** Bug 12318 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[Codrut-gusoi (codrut-gusoi)]

Created attachment 9285
Fixes reverse horizontal scrolling

I've attached a patch that fixes the issue by codifying the solution Razz Fox posted.