Re: gtk file selector patch proposal

[Michael Torrie <torriem byu edu>]

Sorry folks about the huge patch.  (I thought it was around 40k, never
thinking about download time.    Sorry about that.)  I'll gzip any future
patches.

There already is a way to set the current directory.   It works like so:

gtk_file_selector_complete(filesel_widget,"/home/torriem");

You get the picture.  Basically that's the simplest form of the very powerful
path completion facilities of the original file selector widget.  I never
knew about this feature until I looked at the code.  It's very cool.  In
fact, you can actually do tab completion right in the entry box of the file
selector.  It will complete as much as it can, and then show you your choices
in the files list box.

As far as adding features in general goes, I don't think I want to do
anything that will extend or change the existing external interface to the
widget.  Maybe we can get a wishlist going for the 1.3 GTK API or something.
But I think I've demonstrated that a lot can be done within the existing
interfaces and preserving  compatibility with the entire 1.2.x API.


Guy Harris wrote:

> On Wed, Jul 26, 2000 at 11:28:48AM -0600, Michael Torrie wrote:
> > I also added a feature whereby the filename is preserved in the filename
> > entry box while changing directories.  Nothing is quite so annoying as
> > trying to do a save-as with a long filename, only to have it default to
> > directory I don't want, and when I changed directories, I'd lose the
> > filename.
>
> While you're at it, could you make the directory in which the file
> selection box starts be settable by the program, rather than defaulting
> to the current directory?
>
> Ethereal arranges that file selection boxes for opening a file for
> reading start in the directory from which a file was last read (or from
> the current directory if no file has yet been read); to do this, it has
> to "chdir()" all over the place, which is a bit ugly.