Re: Proposal for File-Selection Dialog

["Justin Ross" <opiskin hotmail com>]

>Will all Gnome compliant window manager be required to recognize the 
>idea of a desktop?

It seems a general enough phenomenon in GUI environments that they 
should.  I don't know if they need to, though.

>Where it shows the name of the current directory, it would be nice to
>be able to click on directory name to go there (e.g., if the shown
>directory name is /home/me/work/glib, I would like to be able to
>click on "me" and go to /home/me, or click on "work" and go to 
/home/me/work).
>To this extent, the "cd .." button is obsoleted.

A good idea.  But I don't think it obsoletes the [..] button.  The 
implementation of your idea would, I presume, not put a bunch of 
underlines, blue text, or bevels to indicate they were links.  At most, 
the cursor would change on hover.  So that funcionality wouldn't be 
self-evident, and it needn't be, since there is a simpler 'open parent' 
button built in already.

>I think that item 3 is, at best, simply a waste of screen space, at 
>worst it is confusing:  Why are these things not in the drop down 
>menu, and context sensitive operations (like viewing a file or 
>something) should be placed under the RMB when over that file type.  
>And I really don't care about concerns for MACs only having one 
>button.

The folder-icon menu pertains to the folder.  The buttons above (item 3) 
may pertain either to the folder or to the dialog.  In other words, the 
ability to put what you want up there gives the designer the freedom to 
play, and to make explicit the functions she deems most important.

>I really don't like the desktop icon, I would prefer a cool looking 
>tilde. After all if you are refering to /home/<user> as the desktop, 
>then why not use the tilde -- its been that way for years.

You and I know what a tilde represents, but my grandma thinks only 
Spanish-speaking people use them.  The icon, or some icon like it, 
reinforces the metaphor of the desktop.

>I really do not like the Windows way of putting my computer under the
>desktop.  The computer should the top of the hierarchy, with desktop
>(or $HOME) in the correct location under the proper storage device.

I like the mac way of doing it.  Removable media automatically appear on 
the desktop, and so do network links.  These items then appear at the 
top of file-selection dialog file lists.  

>If you are going to have a filetype selector combo-box, then why
>not make it an editable combo box?  I think that there is a >difference 
between the file selection field and the filter field.  >The filter 
field will display only certain files in the view, >however it would be 
nice if you could type *.tex in the file >selection box and have it 
select all files ending in '.txt' -- like >shell globbing (I personally 
think that full sh-style globbing >should be supported).

I'm for gull flobbing to.  Anyway, I think that everything one can do 
with the filter field, we can do simply in the file name field.  And if 
we do use just one text-entry widget, the interface is less busy and we 
don't bewilder the uninitiated with things like *.[shc].

>Of course, an option to display dot-files.

Okay, but under the file-folder menu.

Thanks,
Justin

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