Re: [Gtkfilesel-devel] Re: File Dialog

[Johan Hanson <johan obsession se>]

Anders Melchiorsen wrote:
> 
> Kent Schumacher <kschumacher@uswest.net> wrote:
> 
> > How about we have a fileselector that is really good at selecting
> > files [...]
> 
> I seem to recall that the file selectors of req.library and
> reqtools.library on the Amiga were quite efficient to use.

I wrote a clone of these for more than a year ago. It was also
binary compatible with the existing file selector.
It became an unstable kludge that was often locked up in infinite loops
in normal use. It would be better to write one from scratch, but
I can mail you the source code if you want it.

I did not rewrite it, but I did contribute with a lot of ideas in the
gnome-gui list. I expected the bonobo-file list component people to 
honor the list's conclusions, and I heard that they had already got
far coding.

> Unfortunately I cannot quite recall *why* I found them so pleasant to
> use and the Amiga concepts may not map to *nix - but this might be one
> place to do some research.

I believe keyboard navigation. Amiga did not support "tabbing" between
widgets so the filename entry field and the file list *both* had focus
at all times. (or so it felt)
These two widgets were connected: type letters in the filename entry
field and the list would scroll to the first closest matching entry.
Click a filename and it would be printed in the filename entry.
Also, if you typed a directory name in the directory box and hit
RETURN, the dialog would chdir there.
You could also scroll using the up/down cursor keys, which was
what I did most.

Greetings
/ Johan
 -- johan@tiq.com -- http://www.obsession.se/johan/ --