Re: File dialogs: Filtering

[thristian atdot org]

On Thu, Aug 17, 2000 at 01:18:29PM -0400, Michael T. Babcock wrote:
> I've always hated the '*.jpg/htm/etc.' drop-down list on Windows
> save-as/open dialogs.  They're useful, until you can't find your file.  THe
> filtering should be more generic than this, although a default filter may be
> in place (and visible to the user) when the open happens.  

The default filter should be effectively "Any filetype I can
understand", and if you want, you can narrow the selection by choosing
a *specific* filetype, or widen it by choosing "All Files".

> A toggle to 'advanced' filtering may be useful, but the 'find'
> button leading to gnome-find which could return the users'
> selections would be more appropriate I think.

OK, a while ago on this list we hashed out a design for a little
application we called "Ghost Lists". Conceptually, it was a GUI
version of the concept of "multiple selection": a toplevel window
containing a list of files and a couple of buttons for set operations,
so you could take the union or compliment of a Ghost List and so
forth. A "find" operation would return a Ghost List, and you could
drag (by a proxy icon, I think) a Ghost List onto an app and have it
work like a "multiple open".

I'm hunting through the gnome-gui archives now, looking for some of
the postings... Hmm.. these don't seem to be very complete archives..
Nov98, Dec98, Nov99, Apr2000.. Oh well, you get the idea.

Historians among you may be interested in a previous file-dialog
discussion:
http://mail.gnome.org/pipermail/gnome-gui-list/1998-December/

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