Better file browser support for Linux

[MESO-DI]

The file browser in the Linux version is pretty limited (and looks like it came from the 90s). It kind of looks like Eagle relies on Wine to run on Linux as I have only ever seen this kind of file manager dialog in the Wine Explorer.

It would be nice if Eagle could instead use the native file dialog given by the desktop environment (unless you indeed rely on Wine, in that case that might be troublesome).

As it is right now I have to manually click through to every location I want to access as I can not access any of my quick access/favourite folders or even enter a folder location into the top bar by copying it from a native file manager window.

[jorge_garcia]

Hello @MESO-DI,

I hope you're doing well. EAGLE doesn't use WINE at all actually. It runs using Qt like many other cross-platform apps.

Thank you for your suggestion, what Linux distribution are you using specifically? We officially support Ubuntu (latestLTS) , OpenSuse, Fodera, and CentOS.

Please let me know if there's anything else I can do for you.

Best Regards,

[MESO-DI]

I'm using Ubuntu 17.10, has been this way since 14.04 though.

[jorge_garcia · Accepted solution]

Hello @MESO-DI,

Thanks for the information. We are planning some big improvements in the near term so stay tuned.

Best Regards,

[MESO-DI]

That is great to hear!
Just for reference a screenshot of what I have right now and what I would prefer seeing.

Current one where I can't edit the favourites on the left (taken from google but ealges dialog is nearly the same):

What I would love to see, all my favourites from nautilus and I can edit the current file path as text via the icon on the top left:

[one-of-the-robs]

The first of those is a Qt file chooser, which would be "native" on a Linux machine with KDE as the desktop.

The second is a GTK file chooser, which is "native" for Gnome users.

There are other ones that fall more naturally into desktops such as XFCE, LXDE, IceWM, TWM, FVWM... the list isn't actually endless but it sometimes feels that way.

Personally, I quite like the Qt one, although I don't like KDE and tend to run XFCE or IceWM. The GTK example you found is OK but the GTK3 default theme version is horrid. File choosers are one of the few places I actually like Windows!

I fear this is one of those places where you'll never please everyone.

[MESO-DI]

I didn't meant it should show a gnome themed file dialog by default. I would like to see it use the desktops environment's default file dialog which there are API's for. So a KDE user would see the default KDE dialog and Gnome users would see the Gnome dialog. Just how it is in other applications like Chrome and Firefox.

Right now the file dialog looks the same on every distribution except for the folder icons and offers the same features as its just a custom piece of code from QT and doesn't talk to the desktop environment in any way. The image I took from google is not 100% how the Eagle one looks like, just to illustrate the lack of features that you normally have with the "native" file dialogs.

It's less about the theme and more about the features the file manger of your desktop environment normally has and are usually the features you prefer if you chose that specific desktop.

[one-of-the-robs]

Unfortunately you can't rely on there even being a default file chooser for the desktop, let alone "an API" for it. I'm fairly sure IceWM, TWM, FVWM etc. don't have such a thing. It would be a shame if Eagle became restricted to only working on Linux installs with KDE or Gnome (especially for me as I don't use either of them).

That's not to say I don't support your request for improvements but I doubt it's as simple as all that.

[MESO-DI]

Thats not really an issue you can always fall back to the QT file dialog if a supported desktop is not found.
But it definitely is doable to atleast support GTK for Gnome in addition to QT for KDE.
https://api.kde.org/4.x-api/kdelibs-apidocs/kio/html/filedialog.html
https://developer.gnome.org/gtk3/stable/GtkFileChooserDialog.html