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Those specific issues were not a problem with UWP. UWP has/had multiple solutions for these problems. Applications could request access to entire folders, inclu

Those specific issues were not a problem with UWP. UWP has/had multiple solutions for these problems. Applications could request access to entire folders, including when presenting the UI of a single file access. Not at first (Windows 8 focused more on single-file workflows to start with), and never by default (always opt-in requests and increased permissions grants required). UWP was rather well designed as a sandbox from a file access standpoint. It was just hard to use, especially with the "too many learning curves at once" thing where using the sandbox meant using an entire new GUI and dealing with entire new process isolation models etc.

iggldiggl 5y ago
> Applications could request access to entire folders, including when presenting the UI of a single file access. That'd indeed help somewhat, but where is this documented? Skimming through the UWP documentation I didn't really see anything like that being mentioned. And would that also work when a file is being launched from elsewhere or being dragged-and-dropped? What little is mentioned in the documentation indicates that you only get access to that single file and nothing else. The only thing I found (other than giving up and simply requesting "broad file system access") is that console apps can get permission to automatically access the current working directory and all subfolders. Plus this still doesn't cover all file formats, because some of them (e.g. playlists, HTML files, DWG files, etc. etc.) can reference additional files in arbitrary other directories. Also to some extent this is already a case of "weakening of the sandbox up to a point where it is possibly almost pointless" – if a file happens to reside in the top-level documents folder and I want to open it under that model, "this folder and all subfolders"-style access means access the the whole Documents folder.

iggldiggl 5y ago

> Applications could request access to entire folders, including when presenting the UI of a single file access. That'd indeed help somewhat, but where is this documented? Skimming through the UWP documentation I didn't really see anything like that being mentioned. And would that also work when a file is being launched from elsewhere or being dragged-and-dropped? What little is mentioned in the documentation indicates that you only get access to that single file and nothing else. The only thing I found (other than giving up and simply requesting "broad file system access") is that console apps can get permission to automatically access the current working directory and all subfolders. Plus this still doesn't cover all file formats, because some of them (e.g. playlists, HTML files, DWG files, etc. etc.) can reference additional files in arbitrary other directories. Also to some extent this is already a case of "weakening of the sandbox up to a point where it is possibly almost pointless" – if a file happens to reside in the top-level documents folder and I want to open it under that model, "this folder and all subfolders"-style access means access the the whole Documents folder.