Hi Sven,
Sven Neumann wrote:
Despite the fact that it has a sane API (which the old widgets didn't have), it also has a number of useability improvements like bookmarks, mime-type icons and the ability to mount volumes. It also features a Win32 backend and in the future it will allow GIMP to work on remote files (if we figure out how to use gnome-vfs w/o pulling in too many dependencies). It is also expected that Search capabilities will be added in the future (see http://primates.ximian.com/~federico/docs/file-chooser-extension-spec/)
If you are missing keyboard navigation in the file chooser, you might want to try a recent GTK+ development snapshot. There have been some improvements in that area.
The functionality of the new dialog is clearly the remit of the gtk developers. However, since the choice has been made to use it, it's affect on the usability of gimp is relevant (and the lack of filters, mentioned below, is a gimp issue).
I've tried the lastest snapshot and the differences are minor. It seems bizarre that an additional keypress is necessary to bring up the text dialog box. Added to which the file completion only matches the start of the name: using the old dialog typing "p*.png [tab]" would filter the list of files as expected; the ability to use wildcards was very useful.
The only image type filter currently listed in the drop down menu is native xcf files.
Keith
