Difference between gesture_scroll_enable and bindgesture?

[tschan]

I saw in the man pages that there is a specific gesture_scroll_enable setting. How is that different from using bindgesture to define a swipe hotkey? Would both work at the same time?

[dawsers]

gesture_scroll_enable is just to enable smooth scrolling of the layout when you are using the trackpad. It lets you do what you can also do holding the middle mouse button and mod key, scroll the layout smoothly swiping with N fingers (default is 3).

A swipe instead is just a gesture to trigger some action. You can assign it to anything you want.

gesture_scroll_enable is true by default, so if you haven't had any problems with other gestures, it means your configuration is good and you can use both at the same time. However, depending on the number of fingers you assign to a swipe, there could be a conflict. In that case, you can use gesture_scroll_fingers to change the number of fingers you need to use for smooth layout scrolling.

Edit: for context, I added gesture_scroll_xxx because sway doesn't need to scroll the layout, all windows fit in the viewport, and I couldn't reuse bindgesture, because it is just like bindsym, but accepting a gesture as trigger. If I wanted to have the ability to scroll the layout smoothly using the trackpad instead of the simple focus change bindgesture would do, I needed something different. When I added that, I also mapped it to middle mouse button plus mod key, because I don't use a trackpad.