> On 2020-07-24, at 1:23 PM, Chris Muller <ma.chris.m at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>>  But another few seconds quickly accumulates simply from having to grab the mouse just to regain focus on the field where I can type the filename.
> 
> The keyboard focus is in the text field immediately the dialogue is opened, so that ought not be a problem. I guess if it really has taken multiple seconds to build the directory tree morph then one might have moved the mousse around in that time and changed that?
> 
> It's because I use mouseOverForKeyboardFocus.  The dialog doesn't always open with the text field under hand, so initial focus is lost.

Oh, well I don't use that option because it drives me nuts, so obviously I won't see that issue. 

So, what actually happens when you go for a 'save as'? Somewhere you are triggering it, presumably from the dock or the World menu? What happens that makes it problematic?

> I know that's the conventional look for "apps" that use files as their only storage, but would you be open to considering a more "Squeak-style" approach?  

I'm open to anything that makes it really easy to get people to save a freshly opened new image under a new name and (generally because of the way the all-in-one etc work right now) in a new directory. That was the driving intent that lead me to make the new file dialogues, though I claim they have plenty of other uses.

In a properly thought out GUI (*couch*RISC OS*cough*) the idiom would be to have a tiny file save dialogue with a text field, yes/no buttons and a draggable icon that you drag to any filer anywhere on the systm. That works brilliantly to handle saving to files, other machines, remote sites, printers, fax machines (yes, you could try faxing an application), compression utilities, other applications, all in a perfectly uniform manner. Why did nobody else steal this brilliant idea? 


> What if the regular text menu could have a "select file or directory" entry added to it?  So it would be available _everywhere_ in the IDE.  This "Squeak-style" approach preserves its sandbox capability modelessly (e.g., without needing a preference), while still providing developers that flexible hook for launching your dialog to select and paste fully-qualified names, anywhere.

I'd need some more explanation for that. What would the workflow for it be? Do we want still more entries in menus all over the place (because to be honest I think we need some serious trimming of menus combined with making proper use of hierarchical menus) or am I misunderstanderising?


tim
--
tim Rowledge; tim at rowledge.org; http://www.rowledge.org/tim
Borrow money from pessimists--they don't expect it back.