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Sync behaviour between thunar and gtk3 file dialogs
Status:
RESOLVED: WONTFIX
Severity:
enhancement

Comments

Description Yousuf 'Jay' Philips 2020-03-18 14:17:31 CET
Gtk3's file dialogs, like file open and file save, have their own settings like 'Show Hidden Files' and 'Sort Folders before Files' which should be modified to whatever is set by thunar, so that when its changed in thunar its modified in those file dialog and if possible should also work in the other way.
Comment 1 alexxcons editbugs 2020-03-18 19:19:42 CET
Agreed that this would be nice.

What would be the concept if we store such settings per directory : Bug #3521 ?
(Because that's already on the roadmap: https://wiki.xfce.org/releng/4.16/roadmap/thunar)
Comment 2 Yousuf 'Jay' Philips 2020-03-18 20:46:21 CET
(In reply to alexxcons from comment #1)
> What would be the concept if we store such settings per directory : Bug #3521 ?

Saving such settings on a per directory bases wouldn't be feasible, as they are not set in the file dialogs in a similar way, and dont think its a good idea to have these set on a per directory basis. I'll leave a comment in that bug report with more opinions.
Comment 3 alexxcons editbugs 2020-03-19 09:32:23 CET
As discussed with brainwash on irc, we wont go for this one.

Though I agree that it would be nice to have the same settings, I dont think this is the right approach.

It is not best practice when software A changes the settings of software B. IMO the right approach would be to introduce a freedesktop.org interface for a file-chooser dialog (Or is there already something like that ?)
Than each application could be triggered by that interface to open a file-manager specific file-chooser. (see e.g. thunar-dbus-freedesktop-interfaces.xml)
So please feel free to check https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki if something like that exists and possibly report a bug there.

On top, even if we would change the settings of the gtk-file-chooser dialog we dont have a solution for per-directory-settings, which probably will be available soon.

Another problem is, that gtk-file-chooser-dialog is not the only file-chooser dialog around.
Comment 4 Yousuf 'Jay' Philips 2020-03-19 11:43:40 CET
(In reply to alexxcons from comment #3)
> It is not best practice when software A changes the settings of software B.

Not sure that this is correct as a file dialog isn't a software and is a feature of the gui toolkit.

> On top, even if we would change the settings of the gtk-file-chooser dialog
> we dont have a solution for per-directory-settings, which probably will be
> available soon.

As 'Sort Folders before Files' isnt a per-directory-setting, this shouldnt be a problem. The only thing in question is the 'Show Hidden Files' setting.

> Another problem is, that gtk-file-chooser-dialog is not the only
> file-chooser dialog around.

Though it may not be, if all xfce apps use it, then it is the default and unifying the behaviour of the default makes an OS feel complete.
Comment 5 alexxcons editbugs 2020-03-19 23:11:15 CET
I am not even sure if it is possible to tweak the settings of GtkFileChooser system-width at all. There is a good chance that only the software controlling the dialog can change its settings.

> Though it may not be, if all xfce apps use it, then it is the default and
> unifying the behaviour of the default makes an OS feel complete.
As already mentioned, IMO the proper solution would be to go via fd.org

Bug #16568

Reported by:
Yousuf 'Jay' Philips
Reported on: 2020-03-18
Last modified on: 2020-03-19

People

Assignee:
Xfce Bug Triage
CC List:
1 user

Version

Version:
1.8.11

Attachments

Additional information