Re: Gnome file selector

[Thomas Cataldo <tom tomc ods org>]

On Sun, 2002-10-06 at 19:58, MM wrote:
> Hi all,
> I've been working on a the file-dialogs. Mainly on the gnome usability
> list. But I need some volunteers :) ,to get this to work. Take a look
> here: http://home.wanadoo.nl/sbm/ 
> It still has some rough edges but the file and dir part is still
> copy/paste stuff in gimp (hmmmm...). Testing is rally hard that way.

The file and dir part is a somewhat a cut&paste from nautilus. However,
to achieve this with result with working coding, major nautilus surgery
is needed:

 o making libnautilus-private a separate and public lib
 o making FMDirectoryView(s) public classes, out of nautilus

And the file chooser should be in gtk+, so no nautilus api/eyecandies
available for the work ;-)

> 
> There has been a lot of talk, flaming and complaining but something has
> to be done now IMHO. If you have some ideas.
> 
> I want to set up some CVS place somewhere for people to contribute. As I
> do not have much experience with this I really could use some help.
> 
> I also would like someone to head the architectural work. Someone with
> more experience with nautilus and GnomeVFS as my coding skills on this
> part are pretty minimal and would almost certainly result in a "peace of
> crap" ;). My idea is that someone writing an application should just be
> able to call gtk_open_file(); or gtk_save_file (); and be done with it.

After reading the thread started by hp some time ago, the JFileChooser
api from swing would fit perfectly for a gtk+ file chooser : 

 o the FileSystemView class is the abstraction we could use for
plugging  a glib based (local fs) view for gtk apps, and a gnomevfs
based view for gnome apps.

 o Their API allow using it as a widget (for wizards) and as a toplevel
dialog for applications

 o allow multi rooted (desktop/home dir/history/network shares) views
(FileSystemView::getRoots())

Just a few thoughts. I'm interested in the file chooser area, so I will
happilly contribute once you have a CVS up.