On Tue, 2002-02-19 at 10:18, Anton Aylward wrote: > Those of you with access to MS-Outlook and OpenOffice might > take a look at how file selection is done in those settings and > compare to this problem. > > The situation is this: I'm editing a message in Evolution and want > to include a different signature. Like many of you, I have lots of > different witticisms and aphorisms, and it might happen that one of > them is more suited than my default signature. I'm sure you've been > in a similar situation. > > So I use the menu => insert => inline text option. > Up comes the file chooser. Awful one, isn't it? That's why I referred > to the one in Outlook. I know the guys at Ximian aren't to blame for > standard Gnome libraries. I know compared to the directory selector in > GQView, OpenOffice and Outlook, its pretty lame. I know some sources > on GTK+ programming explicitly admit its lame. But my point is that > I can get it crash evolution quite easily and quite repeatedly. > > My question is twofold: > > 1) is it the fault of evolution? > 2) can things be configured so it doesn't happen without reprogramming? > > First: how to reproduce the problem. > As I said, I want a different signature. My signature files are in a > subdirectory ~/.signatures. Each is a text file. I do the "menu => > insert => inline text" thin and get a modal dialogue box that opens on > my home directory. It doesn't show the 'hidden' files or directories. > It doesn't show recently accessed files or directories (which I see is > an option in the programming spec, one used - albeit in a different > dialogue box - by GQView. That all may be beside the point. My > "problem" is that I can't see or select the directory I want and hence > the file I want. > > So I enter, variously, ".signatures" - hoping it will change directory, > ".signatures/guessed_name.txt". In each case the dialogue box errors. > Presumably it hands back a value to the Evolution message editor that > the latter cannot handle, that there is no callback handler for. > Whatever, the result is that the body of the editor window becomes blank > and I get a message saying the mail handler component of evolution has > died and I need to shutdown and restart evolution. > > Credit to the guys at Ximian: the message WAS saved (though not as a > draft). > > If there really is no handling of the error return then the answer to > (1) is yes, and that's disappointing. Error handling, checking for > bad return values, is pretty fundamental. I hope this isn't the case. > Maybe someone familiar with the source can look-see and if necessary > enter a bug report. > > An overview of the GTK programming manual doesn't make it clear to me > whether GtkFileSection() default directory CList can be overridden. > > As for point (2), if it can be, perhaps an environment variable would > determine if the hidden files and directories are included. > > Yes, I know the 'correct' answer is to replace the dialogue box with > something more sensible, more like the MS-Windows or the OpenOffice one. > (The latter shows it CAN be done!) > > Another answer would be to have an "insert => signature" and signature > previewer and chooser like in Outlook, but that seems too much to hope > for. > > Or is there some other way to force the GtkFileSelection() dialogue > box to show me 'hidden' files and directories? >
The file selection dialog is bad and is scheduled to be replaced in gtk+ 2.2 however the current one will show hidden directories by using it's tab completion feature. Just type ".sig<tab>" and it should show any directories that start with ".sig" in the directory pane. From there you can either continue to type in characters or select with the mouse. Stephen _______________________________________________ evolution maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.ximian.com/mailman/listinfo/evolution
