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=head1 GTK+ BASH FILE CHOOSER |
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Gtk+ is a nice toolkit, but ever since the new file chooser was introduced |
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in version 2, it became less and less usable. Not only is tab completion |
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gone (at least in a useful form), quickly entering a path has become |
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impossible due to many extra keys one has to press and due to the extreme |
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slowness of the file chooser itself. |
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As an example, when firefox finds a new filetype (e.g. a pdf) and I use |
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its file chooser to select F</usr/bin/xpdf>, here is what happens: After |
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typing F</usr/bin> the app freezes for around 40 seconds. Then it has |
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loaded F</usr/bin> (this is on a typical debian install, F<ls -l /usr/bin> |
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is much faster). Then after pressing return to select it, the window |
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again freezes for about 30 seconds. In the gtk+ 1.0 file selector this |
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took less than a second. As another example, when I save an image in |
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the GIMP to F</tmp>, I can actually see the Gtk+ file chooser accessing |
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other, automounted, paths such as F</fs/cdrom>, or F</fs/doom>, which |
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are my dvd drive and an nfs fs on anoher machine. Mounting those takes |
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additional time to the time required scanning F</tmp> (which again is |
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about a minute). |
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Clearly, this makes the Gtk+ file chooser completely |
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unusable. Unfortunately, despite many people having opened bug reports |
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about these problems, they are either getting ignored, or fixed in an |
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half-assed attempt just to come back in the next gtk+ release. |
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B<gtkbfc> is a hack that replaces the dreaded, slow and hard-to-use GTK+ |
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file chooser by an rxvt-unicode window with a little script that lets you use |
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readline tab-completion to enter filenames. |
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Again, its a dire hack and will not work with all programs. It does work |
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for gimp, firefox, gedit at least, though. Most importantly, it does work |
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for me, which really is all that counts. |
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=head2 DEPENDENCIES |
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The default helper requires F<rxvt-unicode> for terminal input. Other |
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terminals won't do because they close all extra filehandles (and also do |
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not support the less important --transient-for switch). As the helper is |
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just a shell script you could rewrite it to use another mechanism to fetch |
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the filename (such as a temporary file). Anything goes as long as the |
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helper outputs an absolute pathname on stdout and exits. |
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The default helper also requires F<bash>, as it has a F<read> built-in |
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that is readline-enabled. Again, you can easily modify the helper script |
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to use another hsell, or another mechanism. |
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=head2 INSTALLATION |
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Install rxvt-unicode. Then copy the F<gtkbfc-helper> to F</etc/> and make |
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sure its executable and opens a window where you can enter a filename when |
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executed as F</etc/gtkbfc-helper>, which will then be echod to stdout. |
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Then run F<make>, this will create a F<gtkbfc.so> shared object. You |
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have to specify this shared object as LD_PRELOAD when running gtk |
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programs. Either manually: |
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LD_PRELOAD=/path/to/gtkbfc.so gimp |
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Via an alias: |
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alias gimp='LD_PRELOAD=/path/to/gtkbfc.so gimp' |
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Or by putting it into your F</etc/ld.so.preload> (not really recommended |
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for performance reasons). |
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=head2 HOW DOES IT WORK |
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B<gtkbfc> works by overriding the constructor for the GtkFileChooserWidget |
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which is used in most file chooser applications. That is actually the |
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clean part. The unclean part simply replaces some of the file chooser |
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methods by methods that either do nothing or return the filename from the |
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last invocation of the gtkbfc helper program. |
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The original file chooser is kept in the background but is disabled, and |
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is generally nonfunctional. To avoid minutes of file system scanning, |
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B<gtkbfc> redirects the gtk+ file chooser to an empty file in an otherwise |
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empty directory in F</tmp>. |
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=head2 BUGS |
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You want to use readline, so you are some kind of guru anyways, so if you |
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have a bug report, better attach a patch or a very thorough analysis of |
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what goes wrong to your e-mail. Thank you very much. |
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=head2 AUTHOR |
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Marc Lehmann <gtkbfc@schmorp.de>. |
