Re: [XBoard-devel] save position dialog box

[H.G. Muller]

Chris Bannister schreef op 1/28/2015 om 6:41 AM:
> Hi,
>
> I've just noticed an annoying behaviour with Xboard 4.8.0
>
> When I choose save position from the file command, the dialog box that
> pops up shows me a list of folders to choose instead of just showing the
> list of filenames in the current working directory.
>
> I don't know when this changed, but I'm finding it a damn nuisance that
> it doesn't remember the last folder.
>
> It even tries to second guess the fen name I want to save it as! Bloody
> nuisance, as I have to alter that also.
>
> I'm running Xboard on Debian Jessie installed via the package manager.
Is this the GTK build or the Xaw build? I cannot install that package 
because of an
'unsatisfiable dependency', so I have no idea what is in it.

If you are comparing the 4.8.0 GTK build with the Xaw build of previous 
versions,
I am not surprised their could be differences. The GTK version uses the 
standard GTK
file selector, while the for Xaw (which did not have such a thing) we 
wrote our own.

I must admit I don't understand exactly what the problem is. File 
browsers must show
both folders and files, otherwise you could never save in other 
directories than the
one you happen to start in. You might just happen to start in a 
directory where there
are many folders, and few or no .fen files.

From what I tried it seems the GTK file selector always starts in the 
directory that was
current when you started up XBoard. But your complaint seems to be that 
it doesn't.

With 'second-guesss' you mean it proposes a file name based on the players?
Why would that be a nuisance? For me the proposed name starts selected,
so you can just start typing the name, and it will automatically replace 
the proposed
one, like it had never been there. For saving you would usually have to 
provide a name
of a not-yet-existing file, and typing is the only way to do that. And 
in the case you
want to save on an existing file, you can just click it, and the 
proposed name will
be replaced by it. So I don't see the annoyance.

In the development version I recently applied a patch that would keep 
track of
a 'virtual' current directory for every file type (e.g. *.pgn, *.fen, 
*.bin, *.png).
This remembers in which directory you last saved a file of that type 
through the
file browser, and then starts the latter in that directory next time you 
browse for
that file type again. They still all start in the current directory 
XBoard had at start up,
though. (Except that I provided a command-line option -positionDir that 
could
change this for .fen files.)
> Is it an xboard problem, or something else.
>
> I truly honestly prefer the older behaviour, where I didn't have to jump
> through hoops because it used the same directory as last time.