4 ms·

Anyone know if they've finally added thumbnails aka "icon view" to the file picker?

by Jerry2 6y ago

Shared404 6y ago
That would be an issue with the GNOME DE, not the GTK toolkit.
- ptx 6y ago
  Why? Did they remove the file picker dialogs from GTK?
  - michaelmrose 6y ago
    It has never had that feature.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - ptx 6y ago
      This[1] feature? The current file dialog was added[2] with GTK 2.4 in 2004. Before that, before GNOME existed, GTK definitely had file dialogs - everyone used to complain about the design. [1] https://developer.gnome.org/gtk3/stable/GtkFileChooserDialog.html https://developer.gnome.org/gtk3/stable/GtkFileChooserDialog... [2] https://mail.gnome.org/archives/gtk-devel-list/2004-March/msg00195.html https://mail.gnome.org/archives/gtk-devel-list/2004-March/ms...
      - traverseda 6y ago
        No, thumbnails on the file picker https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/issues/233 https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/issues/233
        ptx 6y ago
        Ah. But the thread was about whether it was GNOME or GTK that was responsible for file dialogs. (Or so I thought.)
      - michaelmrose 6y ago
        As a use case let us imagine you desire to open a file to edit in gimp. It is very common to have a folder full of images named very non descriptively by the software that interfaced with your camera or by your camera software on your phone. Image0001 Image0002 ... Image0165 One useful workflow is to open your file manager which has a nice view in which individual file names are placed under iconic views of the images. Importantly this view is zoomable allowing one to easily view a big enough view of the individual images to allow one to differentiate one similar image from another. GTK file pickers have traditionally offered. - Nothing just file names - Miniscule non zoomable icons that are too small to differentiate and thus virtually useless. I'm talking about 2x3mm on a 24" screen. - no thumbnails as icons but a panel off to the side which would show a preview of the selected item forcing you to blindly select image0007 and then image0008 each in turn in order to get a look at each in turn in order to select the correct item. None of these options are even slightly usable. Even the gimps file picker is pretty mediocre and its an image editing program. The really strange thing is obviously such functionality is available when browsing files with nautilus. QT file pickers on Linux offer functionality similar in nature to normal file managers in browsing and sorting. One can select an icon view and zoom making it actually usable to select images. A file picker gui is a very basic piece of functionality. A 16 year old bug for offering functionality similar to windows 95 is a legitimate source of consternation. As Don Norman says "They probably won a prize"
    - michaelmrose 6y ago
      It never had a usable version of that feature to be more absolutely correct https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/issues/233 https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/issues/233
- Jerry2 6y ago
  Nope... it's been an issue in GTK's tracker for over 16 years. They would have passed the buck long time ago if it wasn't their issue.
  - Shared404 6y ago
    I stand corrected.
- Shared404 6y ago
  Never mind, I'm an idiot who doesn't know what I'm talking about.
hedora 6y ago
Has anyone figured out how to save a file with the keyboard? On one machine, opening a file dialog hangs the UI rendering thread for about 60 seconds, and then I close the dialog box because I never wanted to invoke it anyway (different workflow). On the machine where I need it, it doesn’t hang (small victory), and it autoselects the default file name, but not the default extension (good). However, it puts the keyboard focus in the directory listing. So, if you start typing, it filters the directory listing instead of overwriting the selected text in the filename. Tab and shift-tab move keyboard focus to even more obscure UI elements. I just want to type: <ctrl>-s filename <enter> I’m pretty sure that used to work! I guess I should see if someone’s reimplemented $COMPLICATED_APP from scratch in qt yet...

Anyone know if they've finally added thumbnails aka "icon view" to the file picker?

by Jerry2 6y ago

Anyone know if they've finally added thumbnails aka "icon view" to the file picker?

Shared404 6y ago

That would be an issue with the GNOME DE, not the GTK toolkit.

ptx 6y ago
Why? Did they remove the file picker dialogs from GTK?
- michaelmrose 6y ago
  It has never had that feature.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - ptx 6y ago
    This[1] feature? The current file dialog was added[2] with GTK 2.4 in 2004. Before that, before GNOME existed, GTK definitely had file dialogs - everyone used to complain about the design. [1] https://developer.gnome.org/gtk3/stable/GtkFileChooserDialog.html https://developer.gnome.org/gtk3/stable/GtkFileChooserDialog... [2] https://mail.gnome.org/archives/gtk-devel-list/2004-March/msg00195.html https://mail.gnome.org/archives/gtk-devel-list/2004-March/ms...
    - traverseda 6y ago
      No, thumbnails on the file picker https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/issues/233 https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/issues/233
      - ptx 6y ago
        Ah. But the thread was about whether it was GNOME or GTK that was responsible for file dialogs. (Or so I thought.)
    - michaelmrose 6y ago
      As a use case let us imagine you desire to open a file to edit in gimp. It is very common to have a folder full of images named very non descriptively by the software that interfaced with your camera or by your camera software on your phone. Image0001 Image0002 ... Image0165 One useful workflow is to open your file manager which has a nice view in which individual file names are placed under iconic views of the images. Importantly this view is zoomable allowing one to easily view a big enough view of the individual images to allow one to differentiate one similar image from another. GTK file pickers have traditionally offered. - Nothing just file names - Miniscule non zoomable icons that are too small to differentiate and thus virtually useless. I'm talking about 2x3mm on a 24" screen. - no thumbnails as icons but a panel off to the side which would show a preview of the selected item forcing you to blindly select image0007 and then image0008 each in turn in order to get a look at each in turn in order to select the correct item. None of these options are even slightly usable. Even the gimps file picker is pretty mediocre and its an image editing program. The really strange thing is obviously such functionality is available when browsing files with nautilus. QT file pickers on Linux offer functionality similar in nature to normal file managers in browsing and sorting. One can select an icon view and zoom making it actually usable to select images. A file picker gui is a very basic piece of functionality. A 16 year old bug for offering functionality similar to windows 95 is a legitimate source of consternation. As Don Norman says "They probably won a prize"
  - michaelmrose 6y ago
    It never had a usable version of that feature to be more absolutely correct https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/issues/233 https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/issues/233
Jerry2 6y ago
Nope... it's been an issue in GTK's tracker for over 16 years. They would have passed the buck long time ago if it wasn't their issue.
- Shared404 6y ago
  I stand corrected.
Shared404 6y ago
Never mind, I'm an idiot who doesn't know what I'm talking about.

hedora 6y ago

Has anyone figured out how to save a file with the keyboard? On one machine, opening a file dialog hangs the UI rendering thread for about 60 seconds, and then I close the dialog box because I never wanted to invoke it anyway (different workflow). On the machine where I need it, it doesn’t hang (small victory), and it autoselects the default file name, but not the default extension (good). However, it puts the keyboard focus in the directory listing. So, if you start typing, it filters the directory listing instead of overwriting the selected text in the filename. Tab and shift-tab move keyboard focus to even more obscure UI elements. I just want to type: <ctrl>-s filename <enter> I’m pretty sure that used to work! I guess I should see if someone’s reimplemented $COMPLICATED_APP from scratch in qt yet...