Re: file chooser and recently used dirs

[Emmanuele Bassi <ebassi gmail com>]

On Thu, 2007-10-04 at 15:20 -0500, Yevgen Muntyan wrote:

> > if an application registers a directory inside the recently used
> > resources list, it will also appear inside the Recently Used shortcut of
> > the file chooser.
> 
> It'd be bad. "Recent places" is a totally different thing from "Recent
> files". You don't want to see all the folders with all the files you opened,
> you want them separate in some way.

I did not phrase that right. if an application registers a location with
the directory MIME type then it will be presented in the recently used
list like a directory (and sorted first, to offer the least difference
path between browse, search and recently used modes); obviously, it only
makes sense for applications that deal with directories. for instance,
giggle (the git repository viewer) opens repositories, not files, so it
saves the recently used directories - which makes complete sense for
that kind of application. that's why the entire "recent files" machinery
should really (and it is, at least by me and by the documentation that I
wrote) be called "recently used resources": it stores a URI+MIME
type(+additional metadata) tuple, and not just files.

> Recent files list may be abused, you can put folders in there (totally
> ridiculous, by the way), but it's just that - abusing recent files list.
> Inconvenient and ugly.

it's not, and if you think about the different use cases per application
you'll realise that as well. it really depends on what the application
is opening/saving: either a file or a directory.

+++

and, for the record (and I said so in the bug linked), I don't think
that saving the recently used folders should be implemented, unless the
application is already doing it for its own purpose or metaphor. if an
application is dealing with files, then the directory is of no
consequence: it can be recovered both by selecting a recently used
resource in the same path and then changing the actual file name to use,
or shortcuts can be used to achieve the same effects. personally, saving
the directories where a resource has been last opened/saved is a waste.

> > there's a bug open for making the file chooser save the current
> > directory when in SAVE and SELECT_FOLDER mode[1], but it's missing an
> > implementation.
> 
> Hopefully it won't break applications which already take care of that,
> like the sizing stuff did.

I completely fail to see the relation.

ciao,
 Emmanuele.

-- 
Emmanuele Bassi,
W: http://www.emmanuelebassi.net
B: http://log.emmanuelebassi.net