Cross-application open file dialogue awareness of current directory

[Giampiero Salvi]

This is a feature request mainly aimed at Gnome, but that probably involves many different applications.

My daily workflow is disrupted continuously by the open file dialogue not being aware of the current directory I am working on. This is because I use several applications in my work, and none of them seem to be aware of the others. I wish that the current directory would be a global property that all the applications could update, so that the open file dialogue would show it at least as a suggestion, regardless which application I am using.

I will try to describe the situation in more details in my specific case, but I believe this is a feature that would benefit anyone, regardless the working habits.

- I mostly use the terminal to create and manage files and directories, and also to start most applications (with exceptions below)
- I also keep everything under version control, and again use the terminal for keeping the repositories updated
- For the mail I use webmail clients in the browser
- I mostly use emcacs for text editing, xournal++ for taking notes and signing documents, and a few other applications

The following is a specific example, but the same sort of things happens to me thousands of times during the day with other tasks as well:
- a student or colleague sends a document to sign
- I download it through webmail in the browser (by default under ~/Downloads)
- I use the terminal to move the file to the location where I store files for this particular person, and perhaps add the file to the version control repository
- Then I start xournal++ for signing (recently I had problems with the snap version not being available from the terminal so I got used to starting it from Gnome)
- I click on "Annotate PDF" and here comes the first open file dialogue which is not aware in which directory I was working on in the terminal
- I navigate to the right location (after 20+ years of work, the directory tree has expanded dramatically)
- I sign the document and save
- Now I need to send it back to the student/colleague: I click on attach file in webmail, and again the open file dialogue is unaware of what I have been doing so far.

For a simple task as signing a document and sending it back, I had to navigate through the directory tree at least three times (terminal, xournal++, webmail in browser).
Now this may seem like a secondary problem, but I can assure you that when you are trying to concentrate on your real work and these interruptions come continuously, any extra effort for each of them makes a big difference at the end of the day.