Re: a GtkFileChooser comment

[Jonathan Blandford <jrb redhat com>]

Sven Neumann <sven gimp org> writes:

> Hi,
> 
> I've played a bit with the filechooser in GTK+ HEAD and I have one
> comment that I would like to share:
> 
> I don't really understand why typing '/' opens the Ctrl-L dialog
> window. IMO it would be a lot more intuitive and also more convenient
> if typing '/' would switch to the root directory of the filesystem. If
> you'd agree with this, then probably typing '~' should make it switch
> to the home directory. Also typing '..' would go up one directory and
> typing '.' would cause it to be refreshed. In order to make this
> behaviour consistent with the current typeahead behaviour, the
> typed-in characters ('/', '~', '..') should be displayed in the search
> entry at the bottom and would have to be acknowledged by pressing
> Enter. That would also allow to open files that start with the
> character '~'.

Both '..' and '~' functionalities already have keybindings (Alt Home and
Alt-Up/Down).  I don't dislike the thought of adding extra features to
the search dialog (like '*jpg'?) but I have two concerns about it.

1) We don't really have any public API for extending the search entry.
   We might be able to do something private here, but it'll be a bit of
   a hack.

2) We're going to have different behavior than other lists.

Also, as you say '~' and '..' are valid starting paths for files
(eg. "~200-250 recipes.txt", "...And Justice For All.mp3").  Currently,
you can type the first couple letters of a file and hit enter -- I don't
know how you'd distinguish between wanting the home dir in one case and
the file in the other.

> Such a change would make the Ctrl-L window unnecessary for keyboard
> users. It should probably be kept around and bound to Ctrl-L but I
> think the goal should be to obsolete it. Thus the current '/' binding
> appears to be a step into the wrong direction.

It's possible that '/' opening the dialog is misguided, it was added on
more of a whim.  I was thinking along the lines of it being similar to
'/' being used for find in mozilla.  Additionally, if you're typing '/',
you're opening for an absolute path which means you know it's full
location.  The C-l dialog seems better suited for that case.

Thanks,
-Jonathan