File open/save dialog policy changes

[James McCaw <james mccaw gmail com>]

Hi list

I regularly launch programs from the command line in deep directory structures to begin editing a new (as yet unnamed file). I'm a research scientist and have >20 projects on the go at once, so file organisation is essential.

Unsurprisingly, in such cases, when I want to save my work for the first time, I'm going to want to save to the directory from which I launched the program (i.e. terminal's `pwd`).

gnome programs used to, on the whole, respect this - a huge efficiency gain and avoidance of deep frustration compared to windows which always goes back to "My Documents". But this behaviour is rapidly changing with newer versions of gnome programs, with a default to ~/ or something else "smart" becoming the norm.

I agree that for programs launched from overview (i.e. clicked) this 'smart' logic is entirely sensible. But it is very obviously broken when launching from a terminal within the directory hierarchy from the command line.

The "Note" at http://developer.gnome.org/gtk3/3.2/GtkFileChooserDialog.html regarding policy for using gtk_file_chooser_set_current_folder() seems only appropriate for the mouse based overview use case, and my limited understanding suggests that this is the source of my frustrations.

Presumably programs can tell how they were launched (attached to a pty?) and so it would seem to me (I'm not a developer) that the default behaviour of the FileChooserDialog should vary by launch method; or some other more sensible coding solution...anything to avoid the horrendous click, click, click through directories.

Has this been discussed among developers/UI people? If so, I'd be interested to see the debate.

Regards

James