Are there plans for system-wide smooth scrolling?

As Ubuntu seems to be making strategic preparations for a tablet-like experience, I wondered what priority smooth scrolling is for the team.

A use case: I read PDFs on a netbook on a daily basis. Even with fullscreen, I have to scroll about every 10-15 seconds. Without smooth scroll, I have to spend a half second or so to "find" my place. Even though it seems like a small inconvenience, the increments add up quite fast. As a result, I look enviously at owners of a certain well-known tablet far too often.

Related bug: https://bugs.launchpad.net/gtk/+bug/868510

Solution 1:

According to http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/4849/, it is a pretty "hot" idea, and possibly on the roadmap, but it really depends on the upstream GTK developers, as in whether they will implement/accept (a) patch(es) for the feature.

According to a mailing list I read, a patch was submitted (since 2003!!!) but as far as I can tell, not only was there no reply, but there was also no progress :)! I would have to look through GNOME's/GTK+'s bugzilla, but I'm not so sure if this is in progress as yet.

Hopefully though it will be implemented in the course of developing GTK+3.x, since the Linux Desktop in general is moving in this direction (tablets/touch/smooth responses etc).

Update:

This has landed in 12.04 (GNOME/GTK 3.4), but you may only be able to use it with certain devices (afaik), such as trackpads.