[Solved] UNIX-style File Dialog Boxes in APP 2.0 Beta

Hi @mountainair,

The platform specific file/directory choosers were implemented because many people requested it. And we think that they are working great on windows and linux.

On macOS, we were forced to move away from the platfrom/native file chooser recenlty, because macOS is not providing the CMD-A functionality in the native chooser and we can not get it to work up until now.

So on macOS we now offer a file chooser again from our development platform that at least provides the highly requested CMD-A functionality. Once we can have CMD-A in the native macOS chooser we will again provide that chooser because it has other benefits as well. Big downside from my perspective with the macOS native chooser, we can not assign a title on the chooser... which can confuse people...

I think in your case, if you hate the native Linux filechooser, you should consider changing the used linux distribution perhaps? We test on Fedora 28 and Mint 20 at the moment, and we get completely different file choosers on these systems where I favor Mint's, the fedora one is less nice I think for example.

Mabula

Thanks for such a detailed reply, Mabula.  

I did notice that CMD-A didn't work in APP with the native Mac OS file chooser, but it works in every other app's file chooser.  Why would it be different?  If you have any details on why it didn't work, perhaps I could add support to the ticket (at Apple?) to fix it.  More voices = more priority.

I understand that often you need to balance the personal preferences/requests of many users.  Personally, scrolling a little because CMD-A didn't work was a small price to pay to have search and shortcut functionality.  I could just open my external SSD and do a search for my target across several nights of imaging and pull them all into APP in one operation.  With this new file chooser, it often have to navigate to and open groups of files from several folders in several separate operations.  On average it takes me probably 3x longer, sometimes 5x.  It's so bad that I now manually use the finder's search function to copy all the files into a single APP folder, then import them from there.

Anyway, no worries.  It is what it is.  Hopefully someone can fix the native Mac OS CMD-A issue so you can add it back into APP.

Related note:  In the new file chooser, if I am using a mouse (in my case, an Apple Magic Mouse) I have difficulty opening folders.  Double-clicking only works about 1/3 of the time; sometimes I need to triple-click or double-click 2 or 3 times to open one.  I am sure I am left-clicking (I don't have this experience anywhere else).  Interestingly, this works absolutely fine with the trackpad (so that's what I use to enter folders).

I'll add my vote to bring back the native file chooser. The older versions of APP used a similar dialog box to the current one, and it was inconvenient to navigate to other disks or common locations, as was noted above. If I want to change to a different disk (I keep all my astro photos on an external disk), I have to navigate to the filesystem root and select "Volumes" and find my disk there. Plus about 6 out of 10 times double-clicking on a file or folder didn't open it, but rather started to change the file name, and I would have to click elsewhere and try my luck with the double-click roulette wheel again. Then somewhere (I forget where) it switched to the standard MacOS dialogs and life was good. OK, maybe Cmd-A didn't work, I didn't really notice, as I don't use it often, but rather click on the first item and shift-click on the last. No big deal. 

The last two releases with the return of the double-click roulette wheel (what will happen this time I click?) it's felt like a huge step backwards. Please, please, pretty please consider returning to the standard file selection dialogs.....

Hi @mountainair @jcnowack,

Thank you both very much for your detailed feedback regarding the macOS file chooser. I guess we need to try again to make CMD-A working in that native chooser, if that works things will be better for everyone. It is clear that the features that the native chooser brings besides lacking CMD-A are valuable to many users and these features can't be added to the chooser of our development platform without doing extensive work, we would need to start from scratch I think and implement this ourselves then which will not be efficient.

The native chooser for macOS is provided by the JavaFX framework which provides the native macos dialog, I will contact them to see if we can make it possible 😉 I have opened this issue again on our issue list to fix this somehow.

@mountainair, did I misunderstand you? You were referring to the file chooser on macOS, not on Linux then?

Mabula

LOL -- I just noticed that PI also has the same native Mac OS file chooser problem -- CMD-A doesn't work.  I'll reach out to JavaFX to offer my support as well.

Yes, I was only referring to the Mac OS open file dialog in APP.  I use Linux on RPis and MiniPCs for some acquisition, but for processing I love my MacBook Pro M2. I've never run APP on anything other than Mac OS, so I'm not sure what the Linux file chooser looks like (sounds like it's the same JavaFX library).

Thanks for being flexible.  It's not urgent, I think we can wait until you hear back from JavaFX, but I assume CMD-A is a challenge -- otherwise it's likely that would have been resolved long ago.

Hi @mountainair,

Okay, thanks for the feedback. It is on our issue list, so in due time we should get this resolved and get the best file chooser for all platforms 😉

Mabula

It sounds like there's already movement back toward the native-style MacOS file chooser, however, one minor thing to note: the lack of CMD-A is a minor annoyance, but clicking the first file, then shift-clicking the last file is only a fraction of a second slower — I had never considered the lack of CMD-A support to be that big a deal.

I will be very glad when the native file chooser returns! Until then beta 22 seems to be the last one with it, and I'm happy there.

Hi Will @gulielmus,

Thank you very much for your feedback 😉

Mabula

Hi all @mountainair @jcnowack @gulielmus,

In the next release 2.0.0-beta29, the native macOS file chooser will be the default chooser again, so it will support CMD -> . CMD-A will still not work, but hopefully it will at some time in the future.

The reason for this is that it will provide everything for macOS users except the CMD-A functionality. Accessing networks and external drives is also much easier with the native chooser as you indicated.

The CMD-A is something that needs to be fixed in due time upstream by the JavaFX platform team. I have notified them of this lack in functionality and I hope they will work on it.

Mabula

@mabula-admin awesome, thank you so much for the heads-up. I look forward to the update!

I'm also a software developer, and I know the frustration of being caught in between users and changes that have to happe n upstream.

Hi Will @gulielmus,

Exactly ! thanks 😉

Please try 2.0.0-beta29 which I released today 😉 with the native file chooser.

Mabula

Posted by: @mabula-admin

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In the next release 2.0.0-beta29, the native macOS file chooser will be the default chooser again, so it will support CMD -> . CMD-A will still not work, but hopefully it will at some time in the future.

I just downloaded the beta29 version and saw that the native file chooser was back! Thank you, thank you.