On Mon, Jan 24, 2005 at 10:35:57AM -0600, Jim Clark wrote:

If I'm in the wrong place, please point. I don't know where to turn. I am aware the problem is not exclusive to GIMP, but it's driving me nuts, and it may be something simple. I sure hope so.

this mail list works just as well to explain this as all of the other places -- even the more official ways and places.

Using 2.2 on Fedora Core 3. When I do a "save as" in any application, once I type a character or 2, the auto-complete function fills in some name I don't want related to something in the same directory, and puts my cursor back at the beginning of the name, so I end up typing over the name and get something stupid.

this is how Gimp2 is working on all linux distributions or even operating systems. i really did not like this when i first encountered it. TheGIMP developers blame the gtk developers (gtk is an acronym that means gimp tool kit, it is the widgets that the gimp uses when displaying the images and accepting your inputs -- the gimp part is the part that does the transformations on the images, the art and the algorythms.

the gtk file selector did not work well enough for the people who worked on gimp-1.2 and the file selector that you used there was not a gtk widget -- they made that one that worked for them.

I cannot imagine where I could configure the save dialog for auto-complete to be turned off, but boy do I want to do it.This way i type, stop, move the cursor and continue. How convenient!

the only other software i use that has file selection that works this way is mozilla. one of the things i have been told in my pursuit of who did it and why is that it works like macintosh software now and that there are good reasons for that.

the way the gimp-1.2 worked was that you type a few characters and it fills in the rest if this matches any file or directory located in the same directory. then it stops at the point where there are two or more choices. for example, you have a set of images all with the prefix ximi- (ximi-001.jpg ximi-002.jpg ximi-003.jpg ...). the old file selector would see the x and fill in the ximi- leaving the cursor there for you to fill in the next number.

btw, i find this behavior in mozilla to be useless as well. i am fighting for the focus of the mouse all of the time -- i am using my browser to check pages i am writing now, i am working in a directory called gimp2/ it still completes the location to be gimp/ and i am wasting a lot of time because the browser is ignorant of what i want to do and unwilling to learn -- or something.

for gimp to do this is just shameful. the fact that the developers point to each other and not to themselves is sort of telling.

Been poking around on the web but do not know how to word this to limit my results to what I want...not even sure it's called auto-complete in the save dialog.

my personal big effort to get this fixed ended with someone who has a job with somecorportion, an email address which is @somecorporation.com and a web site that is hisname.somecorporation.com telling me, carol@gimp.org, owner of carol.gimp.org that i should fork the "gimp tool kit" if i do not like what they do.

they also say that the file selector that is in gtk-2.6 is much much better. "they" being all the people who have given me this delightful run around i have outlined above. this widget version is not yet available even in debian unstable which seems to be the first to get these things.

i am not certain that there is anything that can be done to change these things using the electronic media/mediums that are available. it might actually be to the point where we need to find where they live and have them explain it in person.

does anyone live physically near to an active gtk developer with some ideas on real life and real time methods to get them to stop?

carol

Hi,

Jim Clark writes:

If I'm in the wrong place, please point. I don't know where to turn. I am aware the problem is not exclusive to GIMP, but it's driving me nuts, and it may be something simple. I sure hope so. Using 2.2 on Fedora Core 3. When I do a "save as" in any application, once I type a character or 2, the auto-complete function fills in some name I don't want related to something in the same directory, and puts my cursor back at the beginning of the name, so I end up typing over the name and get something stupid.

It resets the cursor?? Your version of GTK+ is buggy then. What version are you using?

Sven

carol@gimp.org (2005-01-24 at 1103.58 -0800):

the way the gimp-1.2 worked was that you type a few characters and it fills in the rest if this matches any file or directory located in the same directory. then it stops at the point where there are two or more choices. for example, you have a set of images all with the prefix ximi- (ximi-001.jpg ximi-002.jpg ximi-003.jpg ...). the old file selector would see the x and fill in the ximi- leaving the cursor there for you to fill in the next number.

That happened when you hit tab. Now it tries to guess always, user requested or not. In some cases that does not only causes user fights, but seems to also cause slowdowns when the underlying file system is network based, cos it is guessing again and again (looking for more info to confirm this).

GSR

On Mon, Jan 24, 2005 at 09:10:36PM +0100, Sven Neumann wrote:

It resets the cursor?? Your version of GTK+ is buggy then. What version are you using?

speaking of versions, if i remember correctly, you are the originator of the "it works more like the mac os now, and there are good reasons for this" explanation. could you now consider to share those good reasons with the gimp users?

carol