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Ethereal-dev: Re: [Ethereal-dev] Wishlist: revise open dialog

Note: This archive is from the project's previous web site, ethereal.com. This list is no longer active.

From: "Guy Harris" <gharris@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wed, 21 Jul 2004 15:51:04 -0700 (PDT)
carold@xxxxxxx said:
> In ethereal 0.10.4 it was quite easy and fast to open capture files:
> Ctrl-O, type or paste a filename path, and hit Enter. This ability has been
> removed in 0.10.5 (Win32).

More precisely, it appears to have been removed in GTK+ 2.4.

> Users are now forced to click around like mad to traverse
> directories and scroll lists.

Funny, sometimes I have a similar problem when opening files in Mac OS X,
even with native OS X applications. :-)

I think the underlying issue there is that the GTK+/GNOME folk are
following OS X in some places - the new GTK+ 2.4 file dialog is *very* OS
X-like, which means it inherits the simplicity, for newbies, that the OS X
dialog has, but also inherits some of the annoyance for non-newbies.  I
presume the idea is that, by only allowing existing files to be selected,
you make life simpler by the novice by keeping them from having to worry
about pathnames, etc. and not letting them type a bad pathname. 
Unfortunately, that also keeps them from typing *good* pathnames.

> Would it be possible to provide the old functionality as well?

The new GTK+ 2.4 file chooser dialog would only support that if it were
created in "save mode"; however, I don't know whether that would cause
problems if used in an "open" rather than a "save" dialog box.

It might be possible to use the old or the new dialog based on a
preference setting.