Terminal Smooth Scrolling
Smooth, pixel-by-pixel scrolling in terminal emulators is polarizing: some users find it visually helpful and more natural with trackpads, while others experience it as slow, mushy, and adding unwanted latency compared to instant line-by-line jumps. Commenters revisit historical hardware terminals that supported smooth scrolling, explore technical constraints in modern emulators, and note that adding animated scroll often requires deep architectural changes. Many argue it should remain an optional, highly configurable feature—ideally with different behaviors for keyboard, mouse wheel, and touchpad input—to balance responsiveness, readability, and personal preference.
Overall reception
- Strong split between people who like smooth scrolling and those who disable it everywhere.
- Critics describe it as “mushy”, “laggy”, visually distracting, and adding needless latency.
- Supporters say it gives better visual continuity, helps track where they left off, and can make terminals feel more modern and pleasant.
Input devices and use‑cases
- Many only scroll terminals with PgUp/PgDn, search, or pagers and see no benefit; they want instant jumps.
- Trackpad users often prefer pixel‑precise, continuous scrolling and feel they have “direct control” when it’s smooth.
- Several want different behavior per device: smooth for trackpads/mice, discrete for keyboard scrolling.
- Some like smooth scroll specifically in editors or Vim for line‑by‑line reading; others only care about scrollback for command dumps.
Latency, animation, and defaults
- A recurring objection is any added latency or animation time, especially at the start/end of scrolls.
- Some deliberately disable all UI animations (desktop effects, browser transitions, CSS animations) to maximize responsiveness.
- Bad or slow defaults, and having to re‑disable features on each machine, are a major source of frustration.
Historical and technical context
- Hardware terminals (e.g., VT100/220/320, various compatibles) supported smooth scrolling decades ago; many users kept it off because it was too slow.
- Discussion covers how old hardware achieved this (CRT controller registers, scroll regions, VGA start‑address tricks) and limitations (whole screen vs regions).
- Modern emulators/terminals could in principle do better with acceleration curves, motion blur, or sub‑line scrolling, but complexity and corner cases make maintainers hesitant.
Modern software behavior
- Some Linux VTE‑based terminals already have smooth scrolling; popular macOS and Windows terminals generally do not.
- VS Code and some apps support smooth scrolling, often only for mouse wheel or page‑wise scrolling and not for single‑line moves; behaviors can be subtle and confusing.
- Browsers differ: smooth scrolling may apply only to keyboard navigation, while trackpads often always scroll smoothly.
Side topics
- Some users enjoy visual flair (parallax backgrounds, retro CRT effects); others find transparency and images behind text unusably distracting.
- There is brief meta‑discussion about how to express disagreement without sounding passive‑aggressive.