Adjusting NEdit's Open File Dialog

[Tony Balinski]

Quoting Thomas Orgis <thomas-forum at orgis.org>:

> Am Tue, 27 Nov 2007 15:58:01 -0600
> schrieb Aaron Hsu <arcfide at mac.com>:
>
> > On Nov 27, 2007, at 2:35 PM, Adam M wrote:
> >
> > > 3) You can't open a file by typing its location; you always have to
> > > navigate to it
> >
> > Now this did bother me as well, until I learned that you could enable
> > the "Standard Motif" dialog, which allows you to enter the path to a
> > file name to open.
>
> You know, I also don't particulary like that open file dialog.
> It's ... anything near useful as the KDE open dialog (I don't say nedit
> should be a KDE app, just that their file open dialog does _not_ make
> me wanting to hit the wall and scream for a simple text line with shell
> tab completion).
>
> [...With nc you can open from a shell prompt also...]

You can do a certain amount with macros too. For example, I have a macro
(which relies on a multiple selection version of the list_dialog) that uses
'ls' to get file names, displays them, then allows you to open them in
different ways (tabs in current window, in new window, in separate windows
etc). It's a bit clunky, but it works. For KDE, it's easy to invoke the
kdialog application, capture its output, and open the results as you like.
(Presumably such a utility app exists for Gnome desktops too.)

Ideally I'd like to see something more fluid made available in NEdit: a quick
type-in interface (appearing like the status bar, with completions etc), and
an open-file dialog with toggles for new window/tab and possible multiple
selection. (I must admit I've done nothing to hack together such
implementations.)

Tony