Sublime Forum

File folder selector filtering

#1

When I go to File > Open File / Open Folder and start typing start of filename it does not scroll to name I am typing or filter list of files in modal as I would expect.
It seems it does search through all files using current folder as root creating confusing mess in modal. Why? How do I make it make sense or revert to previous version? (seriously, there should be archive of old versions because I am pretty sure last version worked better)
Edit: Same applies to sublimerge.
Edit2: I am using Linux, KDE.

0 Likes
#2

Sublime is GTK3 now, and GTK uses a different File Open dialog than GTK2 did, and this is one indication of that.

You can press Ctrl+L in the dialog to switch it from the default mode to a mode where it works more like the old default.

1 Like
#3

Thanks.
Though Ctrl+L is not ideal it is better than default.
I guess there is no plan to use default system file picker (if that is even possible)?

0 Likes
#4

On windows it does use explorer.exe which is the default. I don’t know about Mac.

I am a developer (not a Sublime Text dev…juste a Sublime Text user who is also a developer) and use both Windows and Linux.

On Linux there is no such thing as a default file picker.

0 Likes
#5

While on Windows and MacOS there are standard dialogs in place for file operations, on Linux there’s no such beast per se; it’s up to the application to provide the file dialog and most applications do that by using a GUI toolkit of some kind. So what you get as the default picker on Linux can vary from distribution to distribution and/or window manager to window manager and depends on what toolkit is in use in that application.

In this case, Sublime is using GTK3 as it’s GUI toolkit, so this is the dialog that it presents as a result of that. Other applications such as Chrome also use GTK3 and so present the same dialog.

On the other hand, some applications use QT instead (for example anything KDE related), which has it’s own notion of what the default file picker should be.

Which one you consider “the default” thus depends on your window manager; XFCE and Gnome are both GTK based, so all else being equal that’s what you see most often and the few QT apps you run appear to have different dialogs. On KDE which is QT based, you mostly see those and the GTK dialogs seem out of place.

In researching this (and how to change it, if possible) I found articles going back a few years where people were somewhat disgruntled about the change to the file dialogs in GTK3, so we’re not the first ones to dislike what they did, but we might be the most recent…

2 Likes
#6

Yes, what I meant was default file picker for users (linux) system. As in file manager that user is using. As in GTK for gnome, qt stuff for KDE. If that is not possible then, oh well.

0 Likes
#7

I have just checked that. And in my case chromium is using KDialog which is QT, but firefox is using GTK3…
But I see and understand what you are saying. I was just hoping that there is some common linux api where program can say “show user default file picker configured for this system and once done send me back result” and it works similarly like other programs knowing what program to use to open downloaded files by system file associations.
Well, it seems I will just have to deal with it.

0 Likes
#8

The sad thing here is that Linux is a victim of its own freedom and there is no way to please everyone.

The possibilities are:

  • What Sublime does now and use GTK, but this will annoy QT lovers or other UI frameworks lovers like wxWidgets…even possibly annoy GTK lovers in the future should GTK introduce a change that doesn’t make everyone happy.

  • Use QT, which will annoy GTK lovers …or rinse and repeat the above answer.

  • Implement their own file dialog which would annoy everyone who desires a default or system based dialog.

As much as I dislike having to say this, you have to give points to Windows and Mac for consistency through their lack of options in such scenarios. No freedom for the user means you have the one option and that is what you deal with. Apparently when you force something down someone’s throat it goes easier than if you let them choose the poison.

0 Likes
#9

Highly disagree with this. This specific situation is actually lack of freedom (not fault of sublime it seems but linux). Program is forcing user to use different stuff that user could be free to choose. If file-pickers were like separate programs with common api that other programs can start for result this problem would not exist.

0 Likes
#10

There is nothing to disagree about here. The problem exists because Linux is nothing but a kernel. Everything else is user choice/freedom. Don’t want a UI and rather stick to cli sure fine. Want a UI but don’t like X11 that can be done. You can even use your own graphical manager. Window manager? choose from kdm, gdm, openbox, lightdm, i3wm, xmonad and over 30 other ones. What about DE (Desktop Environment)? KDE, Gnome, Cinnamon, Mate, LXDE, LXQT and again we could name another 50 of them.

There are no default file dialog because by default Linux doesn’t even have a GUI. Each distro choses their own or make it and each user can decide to use something else entirely.

So I make my point again, freedom is the culprit.

Maybe if there was a requirement for each WM (Window managers) to provide a default file dialog that would respond to a specific system call there would then be a default callable in 100% of the cases, but it would be dependent on the chosen WM.

0 Likes
#11

You did not read what I wrote. Or failed to understand.
I am not speaking about default file picker dialog for linux. I am speaking about SYSTEM DEFAULT. You know how you can set what SYSTEM DEFAULT program to use to view *.jpg images (via file associations) in linux and then firefox/chrome/other programs uses that when you click *.jpg file in downloads list? You know how browsers or other programs can do “Open folder” (chrome, firefox, torrent clients, etc) and then your SYSTEM DEFAULT file browser pops up? This is what I want. I can’t explain it any clearer.

So let me make my point again - in this case LACK OF FREEDOM (as application forces you to use filepicker from its toolkit instead of asking what filepicker is set as default in your system) is the problem.

No need for WM even. Make file picker new mime type (or what they are called), make file picker modal separate program and use existing structure. I think I have even read such proposal somewhere. Hell, make systemd handle that.

0 Likes