Re: Plans for 1.3/1.4

[Havoc Pennington <hp Mcs Net>]

On Sun, 28 Feb 1999, Ian Main wrote:
> 
> If I go crazy enough using this one I may take a stab at rewriting it.
> Anyone think of any good design ideas ?
>

Please write it as an embeddable widget rather than a dialog, like
GtkFontSelection. Then it can be used in a GnomeDialog, or extended with
preview, etc. in non-hacky ways. The whole widget should be more modular,
so filters and tab completion and history are all "pluggable." 
 
There's lots of UI guideline type stuff for file selections around the
net, I like the new Windows one (I think internet explorer uses it)
and the Mac one is nice too. Copy those, perhaps.

> I had a thought, and I don't know if it's a good idea or not, but you could
> keep a history and/or bookmarks for the file selector, possibly saving state
> in a user dotfile.
> 

Given the current Gtk/Gnome division of labor I think this is bad. It
would be better to have a way to set and get the history, then let
applications do that. GnomeFileSelection (which would be a subclass of
GtkFileSelection) could do the dotfile thing since a dotfile library is
available. 

I hope you'll write this widget, it would be very nice to have.

Havoc