the filename should be selected

[Alex Cornejo]

Binary package hint: libgtk2.0-0

When you bring up the gtk_open dialog the location bar gets by default the first item on the list which can be opened. This can be very handy if that file happens to be the same one you want to open,
however if you wanted to open something else, you have to manually erase the location bar and then retype whatever you wanted.
An easy fix for this, would be for the content of the location bar to be selected by default, that way if you want to type something else
the text would be automatically replaced, without requiring the user to press backspace repeatedly.

This bug is especially annoying if you happen to be a keyboard only user (being it by choice or necessity).

Steps to reproduce this bug execute the following code on the console:

mkdir ~/somefolder
echo "some text" > ~/somefolder/firstone
echo "some text" > ~/somefolder/secondfile
echo "some text" > ~/somefolder/yetanother
echo "some text" > ~/somefolder/lastone
gedit ~/somefolder/firstone

1. In gedit press Ctrl-O to bring up to open-file dialog
2. If there is a location bar go to point 4, else go to point 3
3. Press Ctrl-L to bring up the location bar, then press escape to close the dialog and go back to point 1
4. The item "firstone" is in the location bar, however lets say you were actually interested in opening "secondfile",
    you need to delete the text and then press "s" for the location bar to complete "secondfile" for you, if the
   text were selected by default then you would only need to press "s" (no need to delete the text).

I hope this explanation was clear enough, although this bug might seem unimportant to some, it slows down
a lot one's workflow, especially if working with keyboard only, for example in kiosks where there is no mouse
and frequently not even home/end keys, so you have to delete character by character.

Regards,
Alex

[Matt Neilson (ichthyoboy)]

I can confirm this, but this might be more of a user preference rather than a bug. You do not need to erase the location bar to be able to type-select your file. Press the down arrow twice, and you've moved from the location bar to the file list, where you can type select 'secondone' by typing 's'.

[Alex Cornejo (acornejoc)]

Thanks for confirming the bug. It is true that in the particular example I depicted you could use the arrows, however in general this is not true, since you might want to open a file in a completly different directory, say /usr/share/blabla.txt, in which case you do have to erase and type it again, or use the mouse.

However, you might be correct in the sense that this might be more of a user interface improvement, rather than a conventional bug. I believe this should be easy enough to fix, furthermore, as I mentioned in my original report, this type of improvements have a special impact in users of devices != PC.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thanks for your bug report. This bug has been reported to the developers of the software. You can track it and make comments here: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=519015