scroll: Drive "scroll to end" through uncertainty about endpoint

As long as the bottom sliver is size zero (or more generally, as long
as maxScrollExtent does not change during the animation), this is
nearly NFC: I believe the only changes in behavior would come from
differences in rounding.

By describing the animation in terms of velocity, rather than a
duration and exact target position, this lets us smoothly handle the
case where we may not know exactly what the position coordinate of the
end will be.  A previous commit handled the case where the end comes
sooner than estimated, by promptly stopping when that happens.  This
commit ensures the scroll continues past the original estimate, in the
case where the end comes later.

That case is a possibility as soon as there's a bottom sliver with a
message in it: scroll up so the message is offscreen and no longer
built; then have the message edited so it becomes taller; then scroll
back down.  It's impossible for the viewport to know that the bottom
sliver's content has gotten taller until we actually scroll back down
and cause the message's widget to get built.

And naturally that will become even more salient of an issue when we
enable the message list to jump into the middle of a long history, so
that the bottom sliver may have content that hasn't yet been scrolled
to, has never been built as widgets, and may not even have yet been
fetched from the server.

Author: gnprice

lib/widgets/scrolling.dart

@@ -321,19 +321,91 @@ class SimulationDrivenScrollActivity extends ScrollActivity {
   }
 }
 
+/// A simulation of motion at a constant velocity.
+///
+/// Models a particle that follows Newton's law of inertia,
+/// with no forces acting on the particle, and no end to the motion.
+///
+/// See also [GravitySimulation], which adds a constant acceleration
+/// and a stopping point.
+class InertialSimulation extends Simulation { // TODO(upstream)
+  InertialSimulation(double initialPosition, double velocity)
+   : _x0 = initialPosition, _v = velocity;
+
+  final double _x0;
+  final double _v;
+
+  @override
+  double x(double time) => _x0 + _v * time;
+
+  @override
+  double dx(double time) => _v;
+
+  @override
+  bool isDone(double time) => false;
+
+  @override
+  String toString() => '${objectRuntimeType(this, 'InertialSimulation')}('
+    'x₀: ${_x0.toStringAsFixed(1)}, dx₀: ${_v.toStringAsFixed(1)})';
+}
+
+/// A simulation of the user impatiently scrolling to the end of a list.
+///
+/// The position [x] is in logical pixels, and time is in seconds.
+///
+/// The motion is meant to resemble the user scrolling the list down
+/// (by dragging up and flinging), and if the list is long then
+/// fling-scrolling again and again to keep it moving quickly.
+///
+/// In that scenario taken literally, the motion would repeatedly slow down,
+/// then speed up again with a fresh drag and fling.  But doing that in
+/// response to a simulated drag, as opposed to when the user is actually
+/// dragging with their own finger, would feel jerky and not a good UX.
+/// Instead this takes a smoothed-out approximation of such a trajectory.
+class ScrollToEndSimulation extends InertialSimulation {
+  factory ScrollToEndSimulation(ScrollPosition position) {
+    final startPosition = position.pixels;
+    final estimatedEndPosition = position.maxScrollExtent;
+    final velocityForMinDuration = (estimatedEndPosition - startPosition)
+      / (minDuration.inMilliseconds / 1000.0);
+    assert(velocityForMinDuration > 0);
+    final velocity = clampDouble(velocityForMinDuration, 0, topSpeed);
+    return ScrollToEndSimulation._(startPosition, velocity);
+  }
+
+  ScrollToEndSimulation._(super.initialPosition, super.velocity);
+
+  /// The top speed to move at, in logical pixels per second.
+  ///
+  /// This will be the speed whenever the estimated distance to be traveled
+  /// is long enough to take at least [minDuration] at this speed.
+  ///
+  /// This is chosen to equal the top speed that can be produced
+  /// by a fling gesture in a Flutter [ScrollView],
+  /// which in turn was chosen to equal the top speed of
+  /// an (initial) fling gesture in a native Android scroll view.
+  static const double topSpeed = 8000;
+
+  /// The desired duration of the animation when traveling short distances.
+  ///
+  /// The speed will be chosen so that traveling the estimated distance
+  /// will take this long, whenever that distance is short enough
+  /// that that means a speed of at most [topSpeed].
+  static const minDuration = Duration(milliseconds: 300);
+}
+
 /// An activity that animates a scroll view smoothly to its end.
 ///
 /// In particular this drives the "scroll to bottom" button
 /// in the Zulip message list.
-class ScrollToEndActivity extends DrivenScrollActivity {
-  ScrollToEndActivity(
-    super.delegate, {
-    required super.from,
-    required super.to,
-    required super.duration,
-    required super.curve,
-    required super.vsync,
-  });
+class ScrollToEndActivity extends SimulationDrivenScrollActivity {
+  /// Create an activity that animates a scroll view smoothly to its end.
+  ///
+  /// The [delegate] is required to also implement [ScrollPosition].
+  ScrollToEndActivity(ScrollActivityDelegate delegate)
+    : super.simulation(delegate,
+        vsync: (delegate as ScrollPosition).context.vsync,
+        ScrollToEndSimulation(delegate as ScrollPosition));
 
   ScrollPosition get _position => delegate as ScrollPosition;
 
@@ -488,20 +560,20 @@ class MessageListScrollPosition extends ScrollPositionWithSingleContext {
 
   /// Scroll the position smoothly to the end of the scrollable content.
   ///
-  /// This method only works well if [maxScrollExtent] is accurate
-  /// and does not change during the animation.
-  /// (For example, this works if there is no content in forward slivers,
-  /// so that [maxScrollExtent] is always zero.)
-  /// The animation will attempt to travel to the value [maxScrollExtent] had
-  /// at the start of the animation, even if that ends up being more or less far
-  /// than the actual extent of the content.
+  /// This is similar to calling [animateTo] with a target of [maxScrollExtent],
+  /// except that if [maxScrollExtent] changes over the course of the animation
+  /// (for example due to more content being added at the end,
+  /// or due to the estimated length of the content changing as
+  /// different items scroll into the viewport),
+  /// this animation will carry on until it reaches the updated value
+  /// of [maxScrollExtent], not the value it had at the start of the animation.
+  ///
+  /// The animation is typically handled by a [ScrollToEndActivity].
   void scrollToEnd() {
-    final target = maxScrollExtent;
-
     final tolerance = physics.toleranceFor(this);
-    if (nearEqual(pixels, target, tolerance.distance)) {
+    if (nearEqual(pixels, maxScrollExtent, tolerance.distance)) {
       // Skip the animation; jump right to the target, which is already close.
-      jumpTo(target);
+      jumpTo(maxScrollExtent);
       return;
     }
 
@@ -513,30 +585,7 @@ class MessageListScrollPosition extends ScrollPositionWithSingleContext {
       return;
     }
 
-    /// The top speed to move at, in logical pixels per second.
-    ///
-    /// This will be the speed whenever the distance to be traveled
-    /// is long enough to take at least [minDuration] at this speed.
-    ///
-    /// This is chosen to equal the top speed that can be produced
-    /// by a fling gesture in a Flutter [ScrollView],
-    /// which in turn was chosen to equal the top speed of
-    /// an (initial) fling gesture in a native Android scroll view.
-    const double topSpeed = 8000;
-
-    /// The desired duration of the animation when traveling short distances.
-    ///
-    /// The speed will be chosen so that traveling the distance
-    /// will take this long, whenever that distance is short enough
-    /// that that means a speed of at most [topSpeed].
-    const minDuration = Duration(milliseconds: 300);
-
-    final durationSecAtSpeedLimit = (target - pixels) / topSpeed;
-    final durationSec = math.max(durationSecAtSpeedLimit,
-      minDuration.inMilliseconds / 1000.0);
-    final duration = Duration(milliseconds: (durationSec * 1000.0).ceil());
-    beginActivity(ScrollToEndActivity(this, vsync: context.vsync,
-      from: pixels, to: target, duration: duration, curve: Curves.linear));
+    beginActivity(ScrollToEndActivity(this));
   }
 }
 

test/widgets/scrolling_test.dart

@@ -455,6 +455,38 @@ void main() {
 
         debugDefaultTargetPlatformOverride = null;
       });
+
+      testWidgets('keep going even if content turns out longer', (tester) async {
+        await prepare(tester, topHeight: 1000, bottomHeight: 3000);
+
+        // Scroll up…
+        position.jumpTo(0);
+        await tester.pump();
+        check(position.extentAfter).equals(3000);
+
+        // … then invoke `scrollToEnd`…
+        position.scrollToEnd();
+        await tester.pump();
+
+        // … but have the bottom sliver turn out to be longer than it was.
+        await prepare(tester, topHeight: 1000, bottomHeight: 6000,
+          reuseController: true);
+        check(position.extentAfter).equals(6000);
+
+        // Let the scrolling animation go until it stops.
+        int steps = 0;
+        double prevRemaining;
+        double remaining = position.extentAfter;
+        do {
+          prevRemaining = remaining;
+          check(++steps).isLessThan(100);
+          await tester.pump(Duration(milliseconds: 10));
+          remaining = position.extentAfter;
+        } while (remaining < prevRemaining);
+
+        // The scroll position should be all the way at the end.
+        check(remaining).equals(0);
+      });
     });
   });
 }