File chooser comments

[mortenw gnome org (Morten Welinder)]

Thanks for all the work on the new chooser, guys and gals.

One thing that seems clear to me is that, mock-ups get you only so far.
Sooner or later you'll have to actually use the APIs to figure out
whether the APIs are expressive enough.

I have converted most of Gnumeric to use the chooser.  Here are some
impressions:

I am quite happy with the open-existing-file part:

1. I would like to see a context menu with "Refresh" and "Show hidden
   files" kind of stuff.

2. I _really_ _like_ the filters.  Having the ability to only show images
   for the "Insert Image" command greatly improves the feel.

   Incidently, someone ought to document that multiple patterns and mime
   types have disjunctive semantics.

3. For the mime filter, I would like to see it accept "image/*", for
   example.  I had to fake it with a three-line custom filter.

4. A solution to http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=102605 would
   help a lot.  Currently the file list (in the new as well as old old
   file selector) shows too few files.  I see 7 files with the default
   size, but most of those are often directories so I generally have to
   scroll.  I don't like having to scroll without a good reason.  (Note,
   that the filters help a lot here in lowering the number of files that
   need to be displayed, but they do nothing for directories.)

5. The current "Home"/"Filesystem" part takes up too much space, IMHO,
   and cannot be shrunk beyond the width of the Add/Delete buttons.
   That's an awful lot of white space.

   I am guessing that moving "Add" to the context menu for the directory
   list and "Remove" to the context menu of the bookmark list would be
   perfectly acceptable.

6. How about moving the path bar up on top of both the bookmark list and
   the file list?  It feels a bit squeezed in its current location.

I am somewhat less happy with the save-as dialog:

7. As Jody explained, completion gets in the way.  Since the purpose of
   save-as is to supply a new name, I would suggest that completion not
   do anything for save-as without explicit user request.

8. Things like "New folder" should not take up valuable screen real estate.
   A context menu would be a fine place for them.


Morten
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