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GNOME has no thumbnails in the file picker and my toilets are blocked

jayfax.neocities.org

311–320 of 756 posts

Re: GNOME has no thumbnails in the file picker and my toilets are blocked

#311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not cut-and-paste. That's copy and some weird modified paste that, as far as I'm aware, doesn't exist anywhere else. Why completely break the existing convention?

>Why completely break the existing convention? Because cutting-and-pasting is a destructive action that can lead to data loss. Under the conventional implementation of cut-and-paste, it's easy for a user to inadvertently cut-and-paste a file, when they meant to copy-and-paste said file, either through a misclick or, by hitting the wrong keyboard combination. This is because: 1. The menu option for cut is right above…

I take your point. I can't be certain why, because it's been so long since I used Windows, but I never found this to be a problem in practice — maybe I was just lucky. I guess you could make the same argument about cut in any context, except:

a) you could argue that cutting text isn't as destructive as deleting a file, although they could be one and the same if you happen to have an entire file's text selected

b) mechanisms for undo'ing text operations tend to be more sophisticated than undo'ing filesystem operations; I might argue that's a separate problem to be resolved

I'd be perfectly happy if this were an option, buried in some obscure preference panel somewhere, labelled "yes, I really want to shoot myself in the foot" but, as it stands, I don't even get that.

Re: GNOME has no thumbnails in the file picker and my toilets are blocked

#312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s a save panel? You mean a save dialog? Note that on windows there are at least 3 generations of save dialogs. Which one you see depends on which generation of the api is used. The most common one is the more modern which is basically just an explorer window. Dragging a file into an explorer window works that same regardless of whether it’s an open/save dialog or not. It’s a move/copy operation (depending on e.g…

Yes, a save panel is a save dialogue. It’s just Apple terminology. > I don’t quite get the point of dragging a file to a save dialog at all though? On macOS (since forever) and iOS (since 11), there is a heavy focus on drag. You should be able to drag anything from any app to any other app and something should happen. This is facilitated both by system-level frameworks (so that all apps can gain correct drag-handling…

> So, imagine I have a browser window open asking me to upload a file. If I have that file open, why should I navigate the directory hierarchy in the open panel? I can just drag the proxy icon for that document straight into the open panel. Bam, the open panel is pointing at the correct location.

On Windows you can drag the file right onto the 'Browse...' button on the web page. (this does require some precision, as otherwise you'll open the file in the browser)

> Something shouldn’t act as something else, especially if it’s destructive. That, in my opinion, violates the principle of least surprise — an interface to C or R should not U or D.

Perhaps I'm too used to Windows's idiosyncrasies, but an open/save dialog is an Explorer window (at least in a functional sense). When you drag a file onto it, it does the same thing as an Explorer window. This does not seem that surprising to me.

Re: GNOME has no thumbnails in the file picker and my toilets are blocked

#313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and Gnome is in part responsible for a lot of "desktop" issues with linux. Distros must switch to KDE by default to help eliminate part of this stigma. KDE is so amazingly good that there is no excuse to keep using Gnome.

> KDE is so amazingly good that there is no excuse to keep using Gnome. I have nothing against KDE, but come on. Many of us really do prefer GNOME despite its perceived deficiencies. This is just a matter of personal preference.

Nothing against options, but having distros with a default on Gnome just seems wrong, defaults are supposed to be good and complete.

Re: GNOME has no thumbnails in the file picker and my toilets are blocked

#314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My biggest complaint: Normal Copy and Paste does not work. My mother is used to Copy and Paste and it would work in Linux but not in macOS finder because of: think different Also why are folders sometimes cluttered all over the place and shorts cuts so weird? Well I fixed it all with Forklift but I also grew up with Norton Commander ;)

Can you elaborate? Copy and Paste works exactly as I'd expect in Finder.

I meant the standard cut and paste and short cuts. Sorry.

Re: GNOME has no thumbnails in the file picker and my toilets are blocked

#315
Gtk and GNOME is utter trash, it's going nowhere, has no art direction nor QA process. It's for the large part responsible for Linux desktops having negligible adoption. I wish there would be a open-source, but not free desktop environment built with Qt. Not free because you can't have just about everyone pushing their opinion on it. There has to be a team with strong design and QA skills behind it.

Re: GNOME has no thumbnails in the file picker and my toilets are blocked

#316
post #27

There's more serious reasons this file picker is broken. Here's a trivial to reproduce and obvious issue that's been there for several years now: 1. Open a directory that loads slowly (e.g. one with thousands of files on a smb3 mount) 2. While the list is loading, select a file (but do not open it) 3. Wait for the whole list to load Once the list finishes loading, the file on the very top of the list gets automatical…

Picking directories has been pretty broken forever as well. Say you start in ~/Downloads/foo and want to store the file in ~/Downloads, then navigating up will have "foo" selected, with usually no blank space to un-select (so you'd need to do ctrl+click or something to that tune); clicking "Save" (or whatever) will then descend into that directory instead of saving, so just using the mouse, or not using any shortcuts…

> Picking directories has been pretty broken forever as well. Say you start in ~/Downloads/foo and want to store the file in ~/Downloads, then navigating up will have "foo" selected, with usually no blank space to un-select (so you'd need to do ctrl+click or something to that tune); clicking "Save" (or whatever) will then descend into that directory instead of saving, so just using the mouse, or not using any shortcuts, you really can't do this.

That's a degradation from 2.10, or 2.16, from time even before the 3.0.

Re: GNOME has no thumbnails in the file picker and my toilets are blocked

#317

This is the one problem that torments me every time I am reminded of it. Just today, once again, I tried doing the hack to make programs use the kdialog instead of the GTK filepicker. kdialog works, however none of the thumbnails are showing! Only the icons showing the filetype. I don't use a desktop environment, only a tiling window manager, so that's probably it. But what pains me is as much as I search, I don't kn…

> I don't use a desktop environment, only a tiling window manager, so that's probably it.

I don't use the Linux desktop often, so perhaps this is an ignorant comment, but doesn't not using a DE require a certain amount of elbow grease anyway? If you wanted a more polished/less DIY experience, it seems to me that you should be using a DE.

Re: GNOME has no thumbnails in the file picker and my toilets are blocked

#318
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least enough people care that its become a meme in some tech communities. https://wiki.installgentoo.com/wiki/File_Picker_meme

Yes, and Gnome is in part responsible for a lot of "desktop" issues with linux. Distros must switch to KDE by default to help eliminate part of this stigma. KDE is so amazingly good that there is no excuse to keep using Gnome.

>KDE is so amazingly good that there is no excuse to keep using Gnome.

IMO, one aspect where Gnome excels is its tight integration of alternative input methods. I remember it being controversial that Gnome blessed ibus over alternative engines, but as a result, setting up CJK input is simple and foolproof. Although I prefer KDE in every other way, I have never managed to get ibus working correctly in that environment.

Re: GNOME has no thumbnails in the file picker and my toilets are blocked

#319
post #130
post #2

Users like these are why maintainers of open source software are burning out.

No it's not users, it's open source developers are guilty themselves. There is no need to have dozens of Linux distros, multiple packages, few desktop environments (with apps like email clients, music players, etc. created for each environment). Windows doesn't have multiple desktop environments to choose, Microsoft isn't developing multiple email clients and so on. The amount of wasted time (creating multiple soluti…

You're not even comparing apples to oranges here but apples to nuts. And as a linux user I can confirm that situation is indeed nuts, but the apple that MS is offering you is poisonous but you don't even seem to know it.

Re: GNOME has no thumbnails in the file picker and my toilets are blocked

#320
post #29

This has somehow gotten worse in recent years. When saving, it used to be you could use the mouse to navigate to a directory, then type the desired filename, and press enter. Now, typing the filename initiates a contextual search within the current directory. Clicking in the filename textbox and starting to type doesn’t work either. You have to highlight the base (not the extension or “.”) of the filename. At that po…

Yes, this exact issue frustrates me to no end. Another related issue: when saving something from Firefox, the file picker opens into _a random directory_ each time. Like maybe 50% of the time, it will be the most-recently-used directory, but the rest of the time it is a random directory that I had saved something to at some point in the distant past. It boggles the mind how these bugs can persist for years upon years…

I believe they are not random at all. I haven't dug into it, but I've seen similar behavior here, and my impression is that Firefox stores an association between some or all of the URL host component and the most-recently-save-to location.

If you saved something from http://foo.bar.com/ to /whatever in the past, future visits-and-saves to *.bar.com (or maybe just foo.bar.com) will use /whatever as the default location.

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