Re: Behavior for the file browser window

[PhilipNienhuis]

Torsten wrote
> On 07.04.2013 06:59, John W. Eaton wrote:> Follow-up Comment #6, patch
> #8000 (project octave):
>> I'm not sure what the behavior should be for the file browser window.
>> 
>> Your change makes it so that moving around in the file browser also
>> changes
>> the current working directory for Octave.  Is that the behavior we want? 
>> I
>> think of file browsing as independent of what the curent working
>> directory is.
>>  It seems to me we should only change the current working directory if
>> some
>> explicit action is taken in the file browser.
>> 
>> Maybe we should discuss this on the maintainers list before making more
>> changes.
> 
> Currently, the file browser widget do change the octave directory when
> browsing through the directories. AFAIK this is the behavior of the ML
> current folder browser, too.

You are right (just tested on ML r2012a), but note that ML actually has two
file browser thingies (both of which undoubtedly can be deselected/hidden
somehow):

1. The directory browser similar to Octave (or is it the other way round ;-)
).

2. Some widget in the menu bar indicating current directory, with a
"..."-button next to it that is used to start file browsing. Actually this
widget is meant to keep track of the "history of current directories" (sorry
for somewhat confusing semantics :-) ).
A very handy widget BTW, I use it intensively at work to switch hence and
forth. A sort of "favorites" or "bookmarks".

Anyway these are synchronised. Browsing around in one updates the view in
the other.


> John's change adds the list of recently visited directories and corrects
> the issue that the octave directory is not updated when entering a new
> directory or when the "up" button is clicked.

I like being able to browse around for searching a file w/o actually
changing directory. But OK, file browsing can also be done with other
applications (bash, mc, Nautilus, BSE explorer, Windows Explorer, etc).

Yet I see no reason to blindly follow ML here; do we really want to clone it
in every respect? 
Double clicking a directory in the file browser to set current directory
would be a good solution. 
But whatever we do, somewhere the "present" working directory should be
indicated, also (or especially) while browsing the directory tree.

just my 0.02 €c

Philip



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