File dialogs: an attempt at a summary

[colin z robertson <c z robertson ndirect co uk>]

Now that the dust has settled I'm trying to work out what's been
gained from the discussion and where the consensus lies. I'm
attempting to do this in a fair and objective manner, but I'm only
human and I don't promise to have succeeded. (That the following looks
rather like my own preferences is perhaps an indication that I
haven't.)

It turns out that there are still a number of significant grey areas
to be finished off. Over the next few posts (split up to make the
discussion a little cleaner) I'll try to describe those areas and
hopefully something can be worked out without too many casualties.

First, though, here are the things that I think are fairly
uncontroversial, where I believe a consensus has been reached:

Button naming:
Open/Cancel.

Button styles:
Text, image, or text and image. With keyboard shortcuts.

Auto-completion:
In the filename text field there should be an auto-completion feature.
By default this should be requested rather than automatic. Given that
all the tab combinations are generally needed for other tasks, the
most promising suggestion for a suitable key combination is
<ctrl>+<space>. The correct way for automatic autocompletion to
function is not clear, but would probably be in a Netscape-like
manner: all following the already typed portion of the filename would
be selected (despite the fact that this breaks X clipboard
functionality).

Note: This does not affect the display in the file list view. That
type of filtering is a separate (and controversial) topic.

Single and multiple selection:
When opening files it is sometimes necessary to select multiple files
at once. This must not make the selection of a single file any harder.
(I take this to mean that the dialogs for multiple and single
selection must be similar enough that the user would perform the same
actions in a multi-select dialog as they would in a single-select
dialog to select a single file.) Highlighting multiple files with
<shift>+<click> and <ctrl>+<click> seems to be the way to do this.

Recently used directories:
A drop-down list of directories from which files have recently been
opened by that app should be included.

Save as file type:
Save dialogs must allow the user to select which file format the file
should be saved in. Implementation unclear.

I'm not going to address the issue of how files and directories should
be displayed right now, partly because I'd like to see the results of
other discussions first and partly because I need to give it some more
thought myself, but mostly because it's already 1am.

colin

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