Re: GtkFileChooser extensions

[Gábor Farkas <gabor z10n net>]

On Wed, 2004-09-22 at 20:04 -0400, Curtis Hovey wrote:
> On Thu, 2004-09-23 at 01:29 +1000, Jeff Waugh wrote:
> > <quote who="Federico Mena Quintero">
> > 
> > > I've been working on a specification for an extension mechanism for
> > > GtkFileChooser.  Global searching, lock-down, and metadata systems would
> > > benefit from being able to extend what GtkFileChooser can do.
> > 
> > Could someone write a FileChooser extension to add a tab-complete file entry
> > box, so those who want it can stop complaining? :-)
> 
> This file chooser conversation has gone on far too long.  If the user
> really knows the file that must be opened, then type it into location
> dialog to open it or into search to see the file(s) that match, and open
> it.  
the location dialog is not good enough.

imagine the following situation...

i want to open a file which is somewhere
in /mnt/server/documents/pictures/wallpapers/ ciel.jpg or something like
that...

maybe the folders is not documents, but docs...maybe it's not pictures,
but images...
maybe it's not wallpapers but wallpaper..
and maybe the file is called Ciel.jpg, or Ciel_121.jpg... 
i just know that it's name is ciel-something...
and maybe it's a tiff/png/whatever...

this is a fairly common situation for me...

the problem is that the ctrl+L thing is quite unreliable at least for
me.
a start gedit in "/home/gabor"

i press CTRL+O
i get a dialog with "Desktop/".
(because the cursor was on the first entry in my home dir, which is
"Desktop".
now i have to delete it (which is quite troublesome because it is not
selected
by default)..

i want to open the "documents" folder.
i write "docu",
and i now get an "offer" to complete it to "documents".
so i press tab, and now it's completed.
but there he does not show anything from the content of that
directory...
:(
first i thought that he never does.
(note that i have "documents/" in the Ctrl+L dialog)
but if now i delete the "/" character and write it back,
i get a list of the content of the directory.
now i can write some part of the filename and the list also gets
filtered.
if i use the left-arrow to have "documents" autocompleted instead of
TAB,
i get the list of files in the directory, but in a tiny-little list, so
i have up/down scrollbuttons in it. probably this is a bug btw.

ok, now imagine i got to the "documents/images/wallpapers/" directory,
so that's the text i have in the Ctrl+L dialog.
but wait, i've just realized that file is not yet added to my images
directory.
it's still in "documents/images/unsorted". so how do i go back to
"documents/images"?
i manually have to select the "wallpapers" part of the text and delete
it.

in the old dialog, i would simply press ".." and TAB. much faster.

summary: it's buggy, and it's very hard to go "back" to a different
folder.

next i tried gtkfilesel in gedit:

i press ctrl+o, and now i want to open the file.
but the gtkfilesel starts in my $HOME.
how do i go to "/"?
my first intuition was to go "back"..so pressed backspace. nothing.
for a little time i tried all kind of Ctrl/alt/;whatever+up/left, but
nothing.
so i pressed tab 5 times to get to the list of bookmarks moved to
"Filesystem",
pressed enter, now pressed tab 3 times (because the file-list is not
focused
automatically),and now i finally was in "/".

now i could enter the filename, and gtkfilesel was searching for it
(i am using gentoo, so maybe it's a little patched).
i could find the directory i wanted, press enter TWICE (first to close
that search-thing),
second to enter the directory,
(btw. how do i go BACK to the parent directory?).
the quickest way i found was to TAB around until i got to that path-
widget or how is it
called, and click on the previous directory.

as you see, this was not optimal.
in the older file selector dialog,
i would begin with "/" , TAB, m, TAB, and so on,
and if i wanted to go the the parent dir, i would simply press "..",
TAB.

summary: slow to use with only the keyboard.

then i tried nautilus.
i clicked on My-Home,
and started writing the filename... it selected the correct folder, i
pressed enter,
it opened and so on.
even backspace worked quite fine for opening the parent directory.

summary:
seems that nautilus can do more&less what i used to do in the old
dialog.

> This is a file chooser, the user is picking the file from the folders on
> his desktop.  It lists the files it find in folders.  Regular users
> don't have deep folders so they do not need path completion.  I doubt
> the average user truly, needs a file chooser, we could teach the user to
> use Nautilus (my own habit).  Honestly, desktop computing is a lot
> simpler without file choosers, project/file sidebars, file save dialogs.
> Nautilus does all of that.
sorry but those average and regular users are getting on my nerves ;)

imho...to change a user interface, the goals should contain this:
-do not slow advanced users down.


> 
> For users who understand paths and know the file they wish to open, they
> can use open from location. 
what about users that understand path but do not know Exactly where the
file is?

summary:
seems that i will use nautilus in the future for my open-file needs.
the gtkFileSel does not seem to allow fast keyboard-based navigation to
a file..

i am sorry for the people using gtk programs in non-gnome environment.
for example using gimp in kde...more precisely i hope konqueror allows
fast
keyboard navigation, because they will not be able to achieve that with
the gtk filesel.:(

or maybe i am wrong... i would be VERY happy to be wrong. so please,
please, pretty please tell me all those keyboard shortcuts that make
gtkfilesel easy to use with the keyboard  

is there a document somewhere on the internet with something like:
how-to-open-a-file-in-gtkfilesel-with-a-keyboard?

i tried to find anything about the gtkfilesel in the gnome help, but
nothing :(

thanks,
gabor