From: Earle Martin Date: 16:48 on 14 Aug 2003 Subject: xemacs file dialogues (was: Mozilla save file dialogues) On Thu, Aug 14, 2003 at 03:57:25PM +0100, Simon Wistow wrote: > And the fr*&king filename disapears. I wonder if that's a GTK thing, because I get it in The GIMP as well. But there is worse. Like xemacs, for example. Hit the "Open" button - cunningly labelled with the icon that means "new file" in 99% of applications, because in emacs land both opening an existing file and creating a new one are called "finding" a file, which is fucking stupid because how can you find something that doesn't exist? - and you get: A select file dialogue box. But not a normal one. Rather than use the traditional vertically-scrolling list beloved of most applications (whether with directories listed first (the One True Way) or not), the xemacs developers have eschewed it, choosing instead to have two panes - the one on the left for directories, the one on the right for files. Not so bizarre yet - The GIMP (to pick it again as an example) uses the same system. However, in xemacs, the panes list things sideways. Yes, sideways. It breaks long listings up into columns of 15 items each. And then if there are more items to the side, it puts a little arrow to the side of each item. Clicking on them has the effect of scrolling the pane one pane's width to the side, which is redundant, because both panes already have a scrollbar underneath, and just makes an ugly dialogue box even uglier. And what the hell is the point of scrolling sideways? Who needs to see half of a filename? Here, look at this: http://downlode.org/pictures/misc/ugly_xemacs_dialogue_box.png Pretty useful, huh? Oh, and as you can see, by default it shows hidden files. No convenient checkbox to turn that off, and if there is an option (buried somewhere within the 800 levels or so of configuration submenus) to stop it, I can't find it. Oh, look, though, you can resize the dialogue box. That should solve it! But does it? Does it fuck. You can make the box as large as you like, but the shitty thing will never display files in columns of longer than 15 items. And as if that wasn't good enough, it increases the space between the columns as you enlarge the box! Which means that I STILL HAVE TO FUCKING SCROLL. Oh and you can't double-click files in the box either. You have to middle-click them once. Which is great fun on my two-button laptop. What a load of fucking bollocks.
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