Introduction and toolkit abstraction

[Guido Schimmels]

Am 14.09.2004 22:38:07 schrieb(en) Sean Middleditch:

> The file manager as the file selector is something that many people
> would like to see.  In terms of opening a file, that's already what  
> it
> does.  You browse the file, click/double-click on it, and there you
> go.
> It's open.  Many (most?) apps also let you drag-n-drop a file from  
> the
> file manager to the app window to open it.
> 
> For saving files, things get a little tricker.  The UI needs to be
> figured out precisely.  ROX uses a technique where you type in the
> name
> of the file, then drag an icon into your file manager to save it.

Dragging a savebox into the file manager is a convenient alternative to  
manually editing the path. When you type in the name or the savebox  
already opens with the desired filename, you just press return or click  
OK. In this case there is really no difference to classical save  
dialogs.

> Given
> the accessibility issues with drag-n-drop, I don't at all care for
> that
> solution, but I'm sure someone somewhere has other ideas on how this
> could work.

DnD has accessibility issues, but so does the whole concept of a  
hierarchical filesystem, to which file managers and open/save dialogs  
provide a dedicated interface after all. The solution is to not nest  
deeper than one or two levels from within the home folder - what most  
"normal" people do anyway. Gtk file-chooser encourages this by hiding  
the tree by default.
Gnome file management, with the 2.6 release, has moved significantly  
towards the ROX way already.
Generally ROX accessibility is of course poor, as we don't use the  
Gnome accessibility stack at all. But that's another story, unrelated  
to the issue at hand, as far as I can see.