Re: "Open containing folder" for all apps

[Dave Neary <dneary gnome org>]

Hi,

Federico Mena Quintero wrote:
> In summary, while one can go *down* in the file system hierarchy with
> Nautilus to open a file, one cannot go *up* from the opened file back
> into the file system (presumably to explore files that are "near" the
> one you had open).

Of course with symbolic/real links it can sometimes be hard to know what
directory a file is in, but you can tell what pathname was sent to the
application, and using the dirname from that should be enough.

> Firefox has an "Open in file manager" command for its downloads, which
> is pretty useful.  I find Evince's "Open containing folder" command
> invaluable when I'm organizing PDFs to drag them to a better place.

I really miss this feature (and the related feature I'd like to see of
storing recently used folders as well as recently used files).

Some of the use-cases I've found are:

* When you want to "Save as..." to save a modified copy of a document
without crushing the original, I'd like the folder to be automatically
set to the containing folder of the original. In general, I want to save
related documents in proximity to each other.
* I often want to get the path to original file in Rhythmbox or
Shotwell, and there really is no easy way to do it. Reasons why I might
want to get the path to the original? To move from the app to the file
manager to copy (say) all the photos taken on a particular date, or to
rename an "Untitled album" that I've ripped when I was offline to
something more meaningful, or to simply get the original of a photo to
send to someone (although Shotwell's "Send to" functionality has
improved enormously over the last year).
* For "Recent folders": Saving attachments to emails. I get attachments
related to a project, and I want to save them in the same place. So I
right click->"Save as" in one email, navigate to where it should be
saved, save, and then move to a new email, right click->"Save as", and
have to repeat navigation.

A lot of this would be improved by simply improving the memory of
applications re the last folder they used, but like Federico, I'd really
be able to go from "file in application" to "file on filesystem", in the
 same way I can do the inverse.

Cheers,
Dave.

-- 
Dave Neary
GNOME Foundation member
dneary gnome org