Baffled by Timeline viewing control.

Is there somewhere that explains the rationale and reasoning behind how timeline viewing controls (scroll and zoom) operate?

Each time I approach it I can't reset my brain to how it "works". It seems about as badly designed and implemented as it could be. I'm struggling to understand how that happened.

Has nobody at Unity used Final Cut, Motion, AE, Premiere?

Or Logic, Cubase or any other time based editor...

or ... what about the timelines in Maya and 3ds Max?

Just pick one, and copy how it works, exactly. Only after that's done, make some contrived way of handling timeline viewing changes.

When I say "one", I do not mean any version of Blender, ever.