Re: [PATCH] file chooser: Restore consistent click behavior (for gtk 3.20)

[Matthias Clasen <mclasen redhat com>]

On Thu, 2017-10-05 at 11:46 +0200, Jean Delvare wrote:
> The change in single-click vs double-click in the GTK 3 file chooser
> from commit fb0a13b7f070 ("file chooser: Allow activating without
> double-click") causes more problems than it resolves. There have been
> a lot of complaints about it:
>
> * The first item in a directory is selected by default, so a
>   double-click on it misbehaves. Specifically, if that item is a
>   directory, the first click enters the directory, and the second
>   click will apply to whatever is listed first in that directory
>   (which is also selected by default, so effect is immediate.) This
>   is unexpected and quite confusing.
> * The ability to activate a selected file or directory with a single
>   click interacts badly with selection of multiple files. If you
>   start the selection with a file which was already selected, then
>   that file is immediately opened, before you have a chance to
>   complete your selection.
> * This new behavior is inconsistent with Nautilus, GTK 2 applications
>   (which are sill many) or basically any other existing GUI toolkit.
>   Having incompatible behavior between applications is confusing for
>   the user.
> * While a number of people are advocating the ban of double-click and
>   the use of single-click for everything to make computers easier to
>   use by non-tech-savvy people and people with limited abilities,
>   this change does not even achieve that.
>
> If the problem that this change was supposed to address is that
> double-clicking fast is a challenge for some people, this issue
> should be addressed at the desktop environment level, by
> accessibility tools and/or mouse configuration. The GTK 3 file
> chooser is way too high level and specialized to handle this.
>
> So the best thing to do is to revert this change. Ubuntu has already
> done so, and SUSE is in the process of doing the same.
>
> https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=758065

You are just bringing back the complaints about double-click.

There is no winning here, and I will not support any simple reversal
unless it comes along with a person who is willing to maintain the
filechooser long-term, and field all the complaints from the 'its still
not the same as nautilus' crowd.

IMO the way forward for the file chooser in GTK+ is
GtkFileChooserNative, making this entire mess somebody elses problem.