Not possible to navigate into hidden directories with file selector dialog box

[Michael Lueck]

Various file selection dialog boxes within the Xfce desktop environment appear to be not enabled to navigate into . leading hidden directories. There is no provided way to manually enter a specific filename / file path.

One place I encountered this sharp spot is building Application Launchers for Wine programs. Wine defaults to building its "C:\ Drive" in an hidden (. leading) directory off the user's profile/home directory. This makes it extremely difficult to navigate into that directory when setting up an Application Launcher for a Wine program.

Please see attached screen shot of a clean setup of Xubuntu 18.04.

I end up needing to locate the Application Launcher on disk in a terminal window, then edit it directly in a text editor. Sample edits of a couple of Wine Application Launchers via grep:

Application Launchers located under this directory:

~/.config/xfce4/panel/

launcher-20/13563769951.desktop:Exec=/usr/bin/wine c:\\\\notes\\\\notes.exe
launcher-20/13563769951.desktop:Icon=/home/mdlueck/.wine/drive_c/notes/notes64.png
launcher-20/13563769951.desktop:Icon[en_US]=/home/mdlueck/.wine/drive_c/notes/notes64.png

launcher-48/14782179451.desktop:Exec=/usr/bin/wine 'c:\\\\Program Files (x86)\\\\PMView\\\\PMView.exe'
launcher-48/14782179451.desktop:Icon=/home/mdlueck/.wine/drive_c/Program Files (x86)/PMView/PMViewPro64.png
launcher-48/14782179451.desktop:Icon[en_US]=/home/mdlueck/.wine/drive_c/Program Files (x86)/PMView/PMViewPro64.png
launcher-48/14782179451.desktop:Name=PMView Pro
launcher-48/14782179451.desktop:Name[en_US]=PMView Pro

Two enhancement requests to facilitate not having to drop down to terminal level:

1) Put a UI field to manually enter / paste in a physical path.
2) Add option to hide/show hidden files.

[Theo Linkspfeifer (lastonestanding)]

That is the GtkFileChooser dialog window which is not managed by Xfce.

If you want to open an upstream report, please head over to https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk .

Other than that, you can reveal hidden files by pressing Ctrl + h.