File Dialogs - Take 2

My previous article on file dialogs generated much feedback, and I got varied responses from all kinds of people. I'll go over the feedback I got, more data I've received, and what ramifications the last discussion produced.

In my previous article, I didn't discuss Windows Vista at all, as I don't have a copy of it, however several people contacted me with screenshots, and described the system a bit.

Lets take a first look:


There is a lot going on here. Up on top, we have a crumbs based directory browser stolen out of GTK, but of course this dialog is better than what GTK offers. It also provides a refresh button, and has a recent directory drop down. You also get a back and forward button to jump all over when looking for something. A nice addition though is a search box. Not sure where the file is? Then search for it! A nice new intuitive feature (taken from Mac OS X though).

Below this we have options to change what's shown, and the style it's presented in. The new directory button is also plainly visible. Then on the left, we have a quick location list like former versions of Windows had, but now in Windows 6, you can add and delete them to your heart's content. I'm not sure if you can rename them though, readers please write in regarding this. We then have the standard files listing from Windows 4+, with the ability to change the view like we expected. And of course to round it off nicely, we have the file input box to jump to files names quickly, and of course type in a path to move to like us power users want. File management features are also available.

But wait, we're not done yet, check this out:

As you can see, the "Folders" section on the left can be expanded to offer a tree view to browse your system. This borrows on the directory only browser (along side a file browser) from Windows 3, but offered in a more robust tree view. It seems a bit weird to see directories in both the directory and file browsers, but this should keep everyone happy. Many people were annoyed with Microsoft for combining the two in Windows 4+, as it was harder to navigate directories, and had to jump past directories to find files.

It seems like with this new version, Microsoft is trying to please everyone, offering every type of browsing possible, and I applaud them for that. I'd be interested to know if you can turn off the directory display in the main file list pane. If anyone knows, please write in.

I'd like to personally play with this to see how it stacks up against KDE 3.5's file dialog, but this looks really solid. The only problem seems to be they stills stuck with some of their virtual directory nonsense, such that you'll see Desktop/User and Desktop/Documents, when the actual tree is Users/User/Desktop and Users/User/Documents. Guess we can't have everything.

Next up, we'll be revisiting GTK. All the responses except for one to my last article agreed with me as to how bad GTK was. Some even wrote in offering demonstrations showing how it was worse than even I knew.

The one person who wrote in disagreeing offered some interesting data. No, he wasn't a developer telling me GNOME/GTK folks were improving it, and he didn't actually disagree with what I described as being bad. He wrote in to say that he has a completely different dialog!

Let us look at our first screenshot:


As you can see, a location bar is provided along with everything else we were familiar with, so one can quick jump, and this happens to work well. The quick locations on the left are also combined into one, so you can add and remove even the built in ones. Not sure about renaming though. But wait there's more!


As the above shows, it also has sane auto complete, instead of an auto complete where you write /usr and end up with /usr/src. I asked for the source of these changes, if perhaps it was from a new or in development version of GTK or GNOME. I was told that he had these dialogs since he setup his PC years ago, and that it was from a usability patch that he had installed. Unfortunately though, he wasn't sure where he got them from, so I guess I'm still stuck trying to replace FireFox and GAIM on my machine.

Let us take a moment to ponder though that there are usability patches out there to vastly improve GTK/GNOME, but we still have no hint of them making their way into the official versions. Perhaps if we start boycotting GTK apps, we'll see the developers do something sane for once. It'd also be nice if it wasn't as slow as molasses.

Next, we come to the Qt file open dialog. Last time, I showed a preview of what Qt 4.3 was going to offer. It seems I got no limit to the responses thanking me for alerting them to the impending disaster.

A friend of mine who has a neat app he wrote using GTK told me how he recently added file browsing support and was very annoyed at how he had to spend a lot of time writing a new file open dialog from scratch because of how utterly atrocious the built in one was. He told me he was considering switching over to Qt because he heard how superior it is, and how he won't have to put up with such stupidity as it has sane stuff built in. However when he saw what Qt 4.3 was planning, he promptly dropped any considerations he had, as he didn't feel like he needed to switch to a GTK knock off and reimplement the file open dialog again. Let us remember that GTK originally ripped Qt off and we don't need to go flip the tables, and pay attention to the $0.02 we get from developers who can't even figure out how to write a sane file dialog.

Another good friend of mine also took it upon himself to spread the word as much as possible. He mentioned it in #qt on Freenode, an IRC channel with many Qt developers. I'm told they were furious when they saw what changes were being planned.

Apparently all this criticism made its way back to Trolltech, and Ben Meyer quickly went to work to rectify the situation.

Here's what was in Qt 4.3's repository as of this past Friday:

As you can see, we're basically back to what Qt 4 had, except with quick locations added to the left. The quick locations allow adding and removing, and settings are saved. Unfortunately, no renaming though, so I'll likely end up with many directories labled "src" confusing me. Also, when using the file name box to browse, the bug from the former Qt 4.3's file save name box is here. If I enter "/usr/src", it'll switch to that path, but the name box will end up stupidly containing "src". Seems like someone forgot to do an S_ISDIR(st_mode) on stat(path) before blindly filling the box with basename(path) when enter is pressed.
I have great faith in the Trolltech guys though, these guys care, and fix things promptly. Lets hope they notice this and fix it before 4.3 is ready. One neat thing about the new version though is that you never need to refresh, as the dialog monitors the directory for changes. But don't worry, the thing is lightening quick, and doesn't seem to lag for anything. I even threw it against a directory with 20,000 files, and it displayed it instantly.

Finally, regarding the KDE 3.5 dialog, I wrote last time how it was the best thing I reviewed, my only disappointment was no renaming. However I was informed that you can rename with it. When you right click on a file, the rename option is labeled "properties". Once the properties come up, you can immediately rename, however the additional benefit here is that you can also click check boxes to change the permissions on a file too! I never thought to look in properties before, as I figured it would just give me info on the file, not actually allow me to change anything. Perhaps there should be some better naming go on over there to make it more intuitive, but it is now apparent that the KDE 3.5 dialog is definitely the superior dialog I have actually reviewed.

I really like the idea of adding a search feature though, and crumb supports usefulness is debatable. So I'll toss it up between Windows 6 and KDE 3.5 as to which is the best till I get a chance to get my hands on Vista.
However, KDE 4 will probably add a search to their file open, and I expect the clever guys at Trolltech to improve further if they receive enough feedback.

If you want developers of your favorite API/OS/Desktop Environment to improve, why not point them to this and the previous file dialog reviews. The guys at Trolltech are definitely open to feedback. Just make sure you're ready for rejection if you try talking to the GTK/GNOME guys, they don't care about anything.

Quicksort

Sorting is something most programs have to do on some occasion. Quicksort is accepted as the best in-practice general purpose sorting algorithm available today. Standard C offers a built in Quicksort under the function name qsort(), with the following prototype:

void qsort(void *base, size_t nmemb, size_t size, int(*compar)(const void *, const void *));

Now while it may be built in, each C library implements it differently. Also, it's designed to work with any kind of type/structure, however one can generally optimize it a bit more for the kind that they're dealing with. Since sorting is important, and can take a while with many items, one generally wants their sorting to be optimized as much as possible.

I've looked at several implementations for various C libraries out there, however they all have one thing in common - messy. One I looked at didn't even implement Quicksort, but a Shakersort.

I'm wondering perhaps if some of the clever people who read this blog can come up with a clean but fast implementation.

To start off, here's a mostly unoptimized simple implementation of the standard qsort():

static void swap_internal(char *a, char *b, size_t size)
{
  if (a != b)
  {
    char t;
    while (size--)
    {
      t = *a;
      *a++ = *b;
      *b++ = t;
    }
  }
}

static void qsort_internal(char *begin, char *end, size_t size, int(*compar)(const void *, const void *))
{
  if (end > begin)
  {
    char *pivot = begin;
    char *l = begin + size, *r = end;

    while (l < r)
    {
      if (compar(l, pivot) <= 0)
      {
        l += size;
      }
      else
      {
        r -= size;
        swap_internal(l, r, size);
      }
    }
    l -= size;
    swap_internal(begin, l, size);
    qsort_internal(begin, l, size, compar);
    qsort_internal(r, end, size, compar);
  }
}

void qsort(void *base, size_t nmemb, size_t size, int(*compar)(const void *, const void *))
{
  qsort_internal((char *)base, (char *)base+nmemb*size, size, compar);
}

Note, this implementation is ~40 lines and can be improved. It can be improved with a better pivot selection, removing the recursion, and throwing in an insertion sort for certain cases.

I'm challenging my readers to give me a good clean implementation, which is under 80 lines (bad indentation doesn't count, I'll be running submitted code through my formatter), compliant, and isn't a total wreck. Creating some helper functions to make it clearer is a good idea too. Almost every implementation I've seen makes use of gotos to all over the place, and has returns smack in the middle of the function.

It'd be nice to bring something so useful into the new millennium, instead of using messy or slow implementations from the 70s.

If I get some nice implementations in, I'll do another piece on how to optimize Quicksort for sorting certain types/structures.

Methods for safe string handling

Every now and then you hear about how a buffer overflow was discovered in some program. Immediately, everyone jumps on the story with their own take on the matter. Fans of a different programming language will say: "of course this wouldn't have happened if you'd have used my programming language". Secure library advocates will say: "you should have used that library instead". While experts of that language will say: "The guy was an idiot, he coded that all wrong".

I'd like to look at basic "C string" handling in C. We're talking about functions like strlen(), strcpy(), strcat(), and strcmp(). These functions report length, copy, concatenate, and compare C strings respectively. A C string is an array of characters, which is terminated with a null character to signify the end. strlen() would find the length by seeing how far from the beginning the null was. strcat() would find the null in the first C string, and then to that location copy characters from the second string, till it finds the null. So on and so forth with all the C string functions.

Now these functions are seen by some as inherently broken, since they can read/write data right off the end of the buffer, and the terminating nulls can sometimes vanish if one isn't careful. You see these kinds of issues with C++ programs too. Usually when a Java programmer hears about this, they tell you to use Java, since Java has a built in string class which can't get screwed up by any of these simple operations. Learned C++ programmers know that C++ also has a built in string class, just as good, if not better than Java's string class. Knowledgeable C++ programmers will use C++'s strings to avoid all these issues, and have really nice features, such as sane string comparison using ==.

Switching from C++ to Java, because people know that Java has a string class is kind of ridiculous. Yet I keep hearing from all kinds of people how programmers should switch to Java because of it. One using C++ should generally use the C++ class, unless they have a good reason otherwise. It's a shame most C++ programmers use C strings instead of C++ ones, probably due to them not knowing about it. However this doesn't help when programming in pure C.

For pure C, you can turn to one of the libraries for handling strings, such as SafeStr. But most people won't choose to go this route. Due to this, care has to be taken.

Now I won't kid you, if there's a buffer overflow in a C program, it is the programmer's fault. If s/he was more careful, it wouldn't have happened. However some areas of code are large, have many code paths, and are downright confusing. In those cases, it's easy to screw up. To help prevent screwing up, there exist some more C functions to handling strings properly, and some C libraries also provide extra non standard functions.

In answer to just overflowing a buffer when copying or concatenating, "n" versions are provided. These are strncpy(), strncat(). They take a third parameter to tell it how much they're dealing with. strncpy()'s n refers to how big the buffer is, and it'll only copy up to that amount of characters. strncat()'s n is up to how many characters can be stuck onto the end of the first string. In the case of strncpy(), if null isn't found in the copy process, the result is not null terminated. Leaving us with the other problem. strncat() on the other hand will always null terminate, because it attaches n+1 bytes whenever the second string's end isn't reached. Meaning that you have to tell strncat() length_of(remaining bytes in buffer)-1. This leads to confusion, because of different n meanings, and because strncpy() introduces another problem.

There's also strncmp(), for specifying the maximum amount of characters to compare, which you can use if one of the strings isn't null terminated. Surprisingly however, there is no strnlen(), to check how many characters a string is, without running off the end. Considering that strncpy() doesn't always null terminate, sounds like a useful feature to have.

Taking this into account, in some C libraries, you'll find strnlen() which returns the length, or instead will return the value of n, in the case where no null was found. Those needing it, it's an easy function to implement yourself:

size_t strnlen(const char *s, size_t n)
{
  const char *p = (const char *)memchr(s, 0, n);
  return(p ? p-s : n);
}

Although it would be intelligent to follow up every call to "strncpy(s, n)" with a "s[n-1] = 0" to terminate it yourself. But this hardly helps the confusion. Also take into account that str[n][cpy/cat]() return the destination for their return value, so you'll sometimes see code like:

if (!strcmp(strncpy(buf, entered_text, sizeof(buf)), param))
{
  do_something();
}

However, this code is broken as buf may not be null terminated. A correct version would perhaps be:

if (!strncmp(strncpy(buf, entered_text, sizeof(buf)), param, min(sizeof(param), sizeof(buf))))
{
  do_something();
}

Which is ugly at best.

To solve and work around these issues, OpenBSD has invented the strlcpy() and strlcat() functions, which have been implemented in all BSD derivatives (including Solaris and Mac OS X). Manpage here.

Although I found the standard descriptions confusing at best. Here's my take on it after some study:

size_t strlcpy(char *dest, const char *src, size_t size);

Description:
    The strlcpy() function copies the C string pointed to by src (including the null) to
the array pointed to by dest. However, not more than size bytes of src are copied. Meaning
at most size-1 characters will be copied. The copy will always be null terminated, unless
size was 0, in which case nothing is done to dest.

Return Value:
    Return is always the amount of characters needed to hold the copy. Meaning strlen(src).
If the return value is <size, everything was copied.

With strlcpy(), you can run it once with a size of 0 if you want to find out how much you need to allocate. Although pointless, you'd be better off with strlen(). Now this won't help much if src isn't null terminated, but it should avoid issues you have with misusing the return value like in the case offered above, or when there wasn't enough room. If you always pass strlcpy() the sizeof() the buffer, or the value passed to malloc() as the case may be, you should be safe.

If you read the manpage, you also see a usefulness to the return value. A problem with constantly using strcat() is that you have to keep iterating through the former strings, leading to a speed loss. With strlcpy(), you can do the following for concatenation:

if ((n1 = strlcpy(a, b, sizeof(a))) < sizeof(a))
{
  if ((n2 = strlcpy(a+n1, c, sizeof(a)-n1)) < sizeof(a)-n1)
  {
    if ((n3 = strlcpy(a+n2, d, sizeof(a)-n2)) < sizeof(a)-n2)
    {
      etc...
    }
  }
}

A nice trick for mass concatination, although as the manpage points out, ridiculous, and negates strlcat().

Moving onwards, the manpage listed above for strlcpy() is also for strlcat(), yet as above, I found it a bit confusing too. Here's my take:

size_t strlcat(char *dest, const char *src, size_t size);

Description:
    The strlcat() function appends the src string to the dest string overwriting the ‘\0’
character at the end of dest, and then adds a terminating ‘\0’ character. However, not more
than size-strlen(dest) bytes of src are copied. Meaning a maximum of size-1 characters will
fill dest in the end. The copy will always be null terminated, unless size was less than the
length of dest, or dest is not null terminated, in which case nothing is done to dest.

Return Value:
    Return is the amount of characters needed to hold the copy when dest initially is null
terminated and its length is less than size. Otherwise the return is size+strlen(src). If
the return value is <size, everything was copied.

What's nice about strlcat() is that for the size param, you can pass it the sizeof() or the malloc() value like you do for strlcpy(). But beware the return value, the OpenBSD code is rightly commented as follows: "Returns strlen(src) + min(siz, strlen(initial dst))". Take a moment to comprehend that.

If you're not using a BSD and you want these functions, code is here and here. Be wary of some of the other implementations you find online. I looked at some of them, and they acted differently in some other corner cases. One I looked at even crashed in one of the corner cases.

However looking at that code there, it looks a bit messy. Reviewing our previous multiple concatenation case, which is also spoken about in the manpage, one sees these as a bit weak. If one wants nice multi concat without too much fuss, they'd normally use snprintf() (C99) with a bunch of "%s%s%s" as the format. I myself though prefer a more elegant solution to all of this.

I therefor have created the following logical extension of OpenBSD's l functions, I give you strlmrg():

size_t strlmrg(char *dest, size_t size, ...)
{
  char *s, *end = dest + (size-1);
  size_t needed = 0;

  va_list ap;
  va_start(ap, size);

  while ((s = va_arg(ap, char *)))
  {
    if (s == dest)
    {
      size_t n = strnlen(s, (end+1)-s);
      needed += n;
      dest += n;
    }
    else
    {
      needed += strlen(s);
      if (dest && (dest < end))
      {
        while (*s && (dest < end))
        {
          *dest++ = *s++;
        }
        *dest = 0;
      }
    }
  }

  va_end(ap);
  return(needed);
}

Pass strlmrg() the destination buffer, it's size (from sizeof() or the param to malloc()), and all the strings you want concatenated, followed by a null pointer.
Example 1:

printf("%zu; %s\n", strlmrg(line, sizeof(line), "I ", "Went ", "To ", "The ", "Park.", NULL), line);

It would print: "19; I Went To The Park."
Example 2:

n = strlmrg(buffer, sizeof(buffer), a, b, c, d, e, f, (void *)0);

Which would concatenate a to f inside buffer (given that it could fit), and return the amount of characters copied. Note, it returns how many characters would be copied, so you can use it to determine the size. See this example:

size_t n = strlmrg(0, 0, a, b, c, (void *)0);
char *p = malloc(n+1); //+1 for the null
strlmrg(p, n+1, a, b, c,(void *)0); //Again, +1 for the null

When strlmrg() returns less than size, everything was merged in. The result is always null terminated except when dest is null, size is 0, or it encounters one of the source pointers to match the location it is currently trying to copy to.
You should avoid passing one of the source pointers to be a location from the destination buffer. If you happened to pass in such an overlapping source pointer, and it's not null terminated prior to it reaching size, you will get size as the return value instead of the full size. Also don't try to pass it any non null terminated source pointer, or forget to pass the last null pointer.

Once we have strlmrg() implemented, it also paves the way for a simple and straightforward implementation for strlcpy() and strlcat().

size_t strlcpy(char *dest, const char *src, size_t size)
{
  return(strlmrg(dest, size, src, (void *)0));
}

size_t strlcat(char *dest, const char *src, size_t size)
{
  return(strlmrg(dest, size, dest, src, (void *)0));
}

And unlike the official ones, these won't crash if dest or src is null. I tested these wrappers, and they seemed to match results with the official ones in every regular and edge case I tried.

I also tested strlmrg() in a variety of cases, and it seems to be very good and secure. If you find a bug, or have an improvement to offer, feel free to post about it.

Thoughts?

Are open source libraries written properly?

Every now and then you hear people discussing open source applications and libraries, and how a bug was found. The multitude of bugs being found makes one wonder are open source libraries being written properly? Are they secure?

It is incumbent upon one to realize that having the code open makes it easier for someone to find bugs. There can be many bugs in closed source libraries that we simply don't know about. When the source is open, bugs can be found and immediately fixed by anyone. It leaves the question which one is better?

I'd like to break down bugs being found to two different types. Type A bug is where the library is very complex, and one unique circumstance with a certain corner case of data will expose a flaw. Type B bug is where the author isn't very good at writing libraries, or not familiar with the underlying system calls he's working with, and writes the code all wrong. We'll look at both kinds of Type B bugs shortly.

Type A bugs can exist in open or closed source libraries, but since they're so hard to pinpoint, they rarely are found. In this instance, open source can be an advantage, as one can go over the code with a fine tooth comb and look for that rare case, or the user of an app may be getting some inexplicable behavior, and looking at the source with the given data can track it down. Open source helps the application developer with getting this kind of problem fixed. In a closed source library, a user can be experiencing an error, and the developer of the application has no way to track it down, leaving a bewildered developer and an annoyed user.

Type B bugs can exist in both as well. However a closed source library, which costs money, normally doesn't last long if it has stupid bugs in it. In this instance, it generally is a bit rarer to find this kind of bug in a successful established closed source library. Regarding open source however, if the library isn't popular enough that various groups are trying to attack it, these bugs can go unnoticed, and therefor unfixed for a long time. Perhaps the mentality when seeing such an obvious bug causes one to think: "it's open source, this probably is correct as many other people have reviwed it already", which is a very bad conclusion.

While looking at some shared library code that you can find in GNU libraries used by the latest versions of coreutils, tar, and others, I found some Type B bugs.

I was using Google Code Search the other day to see how various groups implemented certain functions. While looking up three different functions, I found two of these to have bugs in them.

The first was in "lib/save-cwd.c", I found this:

  cwd->desc = open (".", O_RDONLY);
  if (cwd->desc < 0)
    {
      cwd->desc = open (".", O_WRONLY);
      if (cwd->desc < 0)

This bit of code tries to first open the current directory in read only mode, and assign the handle to "cwd->desc", if that fails, it retries in write only mode, and if that fails, it does something else.
Now I have to wonder if the people who wrote and reviewed this file have a clue what they're doing. It isn't possible to open a directory in any mode but read only. Manual for open() clearly lists the following error: "EISDIR - pathname refers to a directory and the access requested involved writing (that is, O_WRONLY or O_RDWR is set).", meaning if write mode of any kind is specified when trying to open a directory, it will fail.
There is no reason in the world any developer should ever try to open a path they know is a directory with open() and any kind of write mode. What's worse is that they try to use it in an error handling condition, and on top of that have some if which acts like it may succeed.

The other bit of code I found was in "lib/atexit.c", here it is:

int
atexit (void (*f) (void))
{
  /* If the system doesn't provide a definition for atexit, use on_exit
     if the system provides that.  */
  on_exit (f, 0);
  return 0;
}

For some background, here is the details for atexit():

The atexit() function registers the given function to be called at normal process termination, either via exit(3) or via return from the program’s main(). Functions so registered are called in the reverse order of their registration; no arguments are passed. The atexit() function returns the value 0 if successful; otherwise it returns a non-zero value.

And on_exit():

The on_exit() function registers the given function to be called at normal process termination, whether via exit(3) or via return from the program’s main(). The function is passed the argument to exit(3) and the arg argument from on_exit(). The on_exit() function returns the value 0 if successful; otherwise it returns a non-zero value.

The functions look pretty much similar, the only difference being that on_exit() seems to have an extra parameter. Now ignoring that extra parameter, shouldn't one be a pure wrapper to the other? Why is the code for atexit() calling on_exit(), then always returning success even when on_exit() failed? A more appropriate implementation would be:

int atexit (void (*f) (void))
{
  return on_exit (f, 0);
}

Is that really so hard to write properly?

Seeing rampant stupidity and bad code in these GNU libraries, you know something over there isn't doing too good. I only found these issues in reviewing 3 functions in less than 5 minutes. I'd suggest avoiding GNU libraries like the plague.

If you're going to be using an open source library for a simple operation, I highly recommend reviewing the code yourself to make sure the original developers had a clue what they were doing.

File dialogs

The file dialogs we use on a day to day basis have changed significantly over the years. Sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse.

Back in the dark ages of operating systems, we have the old Windows 3 file open dialog:

It might be old and considered outdated, but it was quite elegant. You had a drive selector, a directory selector, the file selector, a filter for files, and a box to type in the name of the file you wanted for quick access. It was all very nice, the only flaws being seemingly bad organization, and lacking some features the later ones added.

Windows 4 came along and offered a major reorganization with several new features:

Here all the drives, directories, and files were combined into one pane. A virtual parent called My Computer (renamable) was created to house all the drives, so it could all be dealt with in a uniform manner, as drives themselves were also just logical subdirectories. A drop down tree was added to easily jump back anywhere to one of the parent directories. Minor file management could be done here, such as renaming a file/directory, or creating a new one for whatever you wanted to save. You could also list files in the multi line scrolling list, or select a detailed view to see files with information such as dates and sizes, in case one of these would help you remember which file it was you were looking for. You also got icon support for viewing types and displaying executables.

But my favorite addition to all of this was the file name box. You could type in quickly which file/directory you were looking for, as opposed to just the filename like in Windows 3. But the best part was you could enter a path! If you knew the path you wanted to jump to, it was often quite quicker for those of us that know how to type to just enter the location manually, than to spend time navigating with point and click, and waiting for directories to load. You were able to type in relative or absolute paths, or even type in the full path of the file you wanted and have it work instantly with no time wasted. I absolutely loved it.

Then Windows 5 came along, and they offered some additions, nothing too different, but changes nonetheless:

It basically was the same file dialog from Windows 4, but they added a quick directory pane to the left side. Now one could easily jump to popular locations without having to do much more than a single click. Now I'm a bit sketchy on this detail, someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I recall you couldn't add or remove which quick location buttons appeared on the left, unless you installed Tweak UI, which makes the feature a bit useless by default.

What annoyed me most about the quick location buttons though was how useless it was. If you're not on a network, what does Network Places do for you? You also had quick access to the desktop, which, if you use your desktop properly, is quite pointless. The desktop is a good place to gather links (shortcuts) for frequently used apps, not to gather applications or various documents. How often does someone who cleanly manages their computer need to jump to the desktop to launch an application via a file open dialog? For those of us who know how to type, My Computer shortcut there was also pointless. Why would I go to My Computer? To open F: perhaps? I find typing F: directly to be faster than moving the mouse and clicking, and if I had more details about where I wanted to go offhand, I would enter that too. I ended up feeling while this was an intriguing addition, it was completely useless to power users - those who managed their files neatly, knew how to type, and had more of a clue where they kept their stuff.

Another highly annoying thing I found was the entire virtual directory setup. First there's My Documents. What exactly should one be storing in My Documents? When I first noticed that in Windows 98, I figured that's where various text files, papers, spreadsheets, and presentations might go. Should I stick source code to my app in there? Should I have Command & Conquer 3 store its save files there? If I was ripping a DVD would it go there? Should my virus scanner save log files there?

Now if I'm in My Documents, and I press directory up, instead of going to my home directory, I reach My Desktop. What's the logic behind this? And don't try to go up from My Desktop either, you won't go anywhere. Your home directory compared to UNIX also seems completely illogical. What does one put in their home directory? A casual glance at it and you see My Documents, internet browsing related directories, and hidden application settings. Would I put my personal applications here? What about stuff I want to share with all users of the computer, say pictures of my kids? Now I personally would set aside a whole drive for things like pictures of the kids and have it all organized neatly, and then have it symlinked to from the home directory of each family member. Yet Windows seems to not really have any provisions for this. Symlinks are non existent, and the shortcut system is a joke, which just constantly acts weird when you try to set a link to another drive or directory and you scratch your head wondering why did a new instance of Windows Explorer just launch?

I'm told Vista got some of this user stuff improved, but I've yet to see it, as I don't feel like shelling out several hundred for something I've already spent a considerable amount on for previous versions.

I'd appreciate if users of Windows 6 (Vista) could write in and tell me if we actually have sane home management, and that the virtual directory nonsense has been sanitized. Also would be nice to know if one can easily add or remove quick locations this time around.

Oh and before I finish on this one, Windows 5 also allowed thumbnail viewing of multimedia files in the file dialogs, in addition to other useful views added.


Now lets take a look at some of the UNIX counterparts.


First off we have the despicable GTK/GNOME file dialog. Sorry for those of you that now have to go poke their eyes out from seeing this, but it has to be shown:

Now while it looked pretty much the same as it does now compared to say, 3 years back, it has had some changes since then.
It displays a directory/file browser quite clearly along with the date of everything in a simple scroll down view. Don't bother looking for any way to change the view or to get any additional details to show up such as file size. I assume they think they make up for it though by allowing you to reverse the order of the alphabetical sorting, or by allowing sorting via date. Although like other open dialogs, they got the file type filter right. Now in style with a group which likes to copy everything Microsoft does with Windows, but try to put a new spin on it and say all their goals are to do everything different than Windows; they copied the quick locations browser on the left, right down to a completely useless irremovable desktop quick location. Although it's nice to see they included home, and surprisingly enough they have a section where you can easily add or remove your own additions to the quick locations (but not remove the built in ones).
One thing which might be an improvement is the crumb browsing on top. Unlike Windows 4+ where they offered a drop down of the directory tree, you now see each directory component in a button by itself, and you can easily immediately click on the one you want to jump to. This mechanism was also combined with the traditional up button which is no longer needed with this interface. A nice idea indeed, which I think might make life easier for more inexperienced users, and perhaps getting them more familiarized with what a full path is.

Although those of you who looked good at that file dialog must be scratching their head, wondering where is the box to type in the file quickly or to change paths? Now in earlier versions of GTK, it simply didn't exist, even though everyone who used a file dialog from the past decade had access to one. After enough pressure from users demanding one, they finally added it, albeit it's completely hidden and doesn't appear till you start typing something. Heaven forbid a new user should see an input box, it's of course much better to have a user think this is an old version of GTK, where they can't navigate quickly </sarcasm>.

Speaking of navigating quickly, for some reason this utter disgrace also takes forever to display any directory with many files in it. But it doesn't just stop there. When they finally got around to secretly adding the quick navigation field, they decided to put an auto complete feature in. Sounds great, right? Wrong! I'm in Firefox and want to tell it to open the file I just downloaded with KWrite. I go to input "/usr/bin/kwrite", after I type in "/us", it finished scanning for matches to "/u" as "/usr" and replaces it, leaving me with "/usr/s", forcing me to backspace in middle of typing, and then go through the same nonsense again with the "bin" component. But it hardly stops there, I've seen this thing freeze before when trying to auto complete whatever I was typing for a good 10 seconds or more, which is completely unacceptable. But then just when I got "/usr/bin/kwrite" entered and am hoping it's now going to launch KWrite for me, it instead freezes for 20 seconds loading up "/usr/bin" which contains ~2000 files (due to UNIX being made up of many small applications, and most executables being stored in one location), and just showing me the kwrite entry highlighted, where I further have to go ahead and click okay. Why the heck is this thing so freaking slow? And why the heck didn't it just load KWrite once it saw it was an absolute path to a file?

And if you haven't guess it yet, no this garbage can't do any kind of file management from it's file dialog.

After having to put up with this annoying broken piece of trash, I'm trying to find a replacement to every GTK application I use in UNIX where I might have to use a file dialog for some reason. If you know of a way to get Firefox plugins working in Konqueror, or of a GAIM replacement with a similar interface, drop me a line.

GTK/GNOME is just downright awful, and don't just take my word for it, even Linus Torvalds says so.


Next we have the Qt4 file dialog. Qt wraps to whatever native file dialogs are for that system, so on Windows you'll see whatever Windows does for that version, and on Mac OS X, whatever it does. For Linux, *BSD, Solaris, or any other UNIX, since there is no native GUI, it creates it's own. Let's take a look:

It looked pretty much like what you get from Windows 4. Everything Windows 4 can do, this can too. There really is only one difference (which I personally like a lot). The drop down on top instead of showing just the name of the recent path and offering a way to go up to previous components, it displays the full path every time, and allows it to be edited! I enjoy this a lot, as I can easily type in where I want to go, with it being obvious where to put this data. But this goes a step beyond anything we've looked at till now, for it has good auto complete! If it finds a match to what you were typing in, it displays the match, but for anything extra you entered gets properly inserted into the match replacement string. I think this is the file dialog that all others should be judged against.

Next we'll look at the modern KDE 3.5 file dialog. Although KDE 3.5 is based on Qt3, and KDE 4 will be based on Qt4, they reimplemented anything to do with files. They did this not just to perhaps improve on Qt's file dialogs, but because KDE can transparently work with files across all kinds of network protocols, which Qt or for that matter other APIs don't. Let's have a look:

Looking at this, it seems to be pretty much the same as Qt4, except it inherited Windows 5's location buttons on the left. Now while I don't care for some of the default buttons such as Desktop, everything here is fully editable - as it should be! One can right click on any of those locations to edit an entry, delete an entry, or change its icon. One is free to remove any of the default ones if they don't like them or feel they're useless. To add a new one, you can either right click, and select name, path, and icon, or you can just drag a directory from the browsing pane right into the location pane!

What's more though is that this thing is super configurable. You can click on that wrench icon to change the options as you want. If you don't want the quick location pane, you can easily turn it off. If you prefer to have directories and files split into two separate panes like Windows 3, you can do that too. You can also select to see regular or detailed view. During even the regular view though, you can tell it how you want things sorted from the wrench drop down. If you want to see multimedia files displayed as thumbnails as you browse like Windows 5, that's a configurable option as well. Yet this goes above and beyond to combine fast browsing and thumbnails. You can tell it show a thumbnail box on the right, which will only show a thumbnail for the selected file, so you can easily preview without having to slow down browsing by generating all those thumbnails. Thumbnails also go beyond multimedia files, for text files, it will display the first few lines of text.

Now regarding the path entering on top, you can enter any path as you like. Like Qt4, it offers very good auto complete, yet goes even a step beyond. When entering a path, it also tries to auto complete, but the drop down displays all matching paths (see image above). So you can easily press down to select the first one and continue typing, or you can select one of the others ones too. And as mentioned earlier, this works with all kinds of protocols. If you wanted to open a remote file from some website, you can easily enter http:// and the URL, or you can browse some FTP site with ftp://, and enter a user name and password when prompted if need be. It also works for Windows networks, or for browsing any system you can SSH to, or any other protocol you can think of, provided that KDE's I/O library supports it.

The only missing feature here is that you can't rename files from the file dialog like you can in Windows 4+ and Qt4. I always found that feature useful if you wanted to save a file as the same name as something existing, but wanted that old file to be backed up. Perhaps some KDE developers have been spending too much time with GNOME/GTK devs.

Speaking of which, I've been previewing some stuff for KDE 4. Now while I have no idea what the final product would look like, some changes as they currently stand are a bit disturbing. The KDE developers said they were changing the system to use the Dolphin interface. The Dolphin interface seems to be inspired by GNOME/GTK. They took a leaf out of their book and are providing a crumb based path above, so you can jump around like you can in GNOME/GTK's file browser. Although they mention they want to improve it by making each of those a drop down. A drop down would allow one to jump to sibling directories, although that wasn't in the build I was testing. Now the path editing I love is also there, although you need to click a button up top to switch to it. If they don't allow you to select the default method, or perhaps always display both, I will be quite upset. However their crumb browser seems to have adopted stupidity from Windows as well. It now adopted the whole virtual directory idea that Windows has. So say I'm in my home directory and want to go up one so I can select my spouse's home directory, no dice. One can't select a crumb before their home directory, as nothing exists above it when you jump to home. I don't know why KDE devs are adopting stupid GNOME ideas, or taking a step backwards to design mistakes and oddities from Windows, but I sure hope someone knocks some sense into them soon.

If I wanted to design a good crumb based editor, I think I would merge the various ideas. Have the kind of input box we're used to, but make it that each slash turns into a button which you can use to delete the path components after it, or drop down with a list of sibling directories.


Finally, let us take a look what Trolltech has in store for us next. They are redesigning the dialog for Qt 4.3, and one can download a development snapshot and play with the new file dialog. Although based on what I heard, they don't plan on changing it much from what they have in their repository at the moment . Here it is, direct from my personal compile of Qt 4.3's repository as of yesterday:

I don't know what they did. Perhaps Trolltech hired some bozos who work on GTK to come up with this. They seem to have more or less taken from KDE 3.5 the quick location pane on the left. It has sane defaults, and you can remove what is there, or add by dragging from the main browsing pane. Yet no editing of any sort, or adding by typing in a path is available. Your changes don't seem to be saved in any way either from one run to the next, making customizing it pointless. I don't know why they didn't just replicate what KDE 3.5 did here, as they had it perfect.

For your browsing, details view now seems to be the default, although you can change to the old default of list view. Now in detailed view, the only thing you see is file name and date, just like in GTK. The copying of stupidity is uncanny. It seems they removed features and changed defaults to make it resemble GTK more, for some absurd reason. Thankfully though you can rename and delete files here, but surprisingly enough, there seems to be no way to create a new directory.

And those of you who have been paying attention, of course will wonder, where is the path editing box? Yet again it seems they copied GTK and hid it by default, to reach it you have to click on the browsing pane, and then start typing. Not at all intuitive, and sadly, seems to be copying a bad Qt knock off. At least the path editor though has the improved auto complete seen in KDE 3.5.

I don't know what's becoming of KDE and Trolltech these days, they seem to be taking the bad from GTK/GNOME and throwing away their own good technology.
But that file open dialog from Qt 4.3 is really freaking me out. I can't even begin to describe what a major step backwards it is. What happened to the sanity? Where's the intelligence? Where's all the good stuff? Why am I looking at garbage from a lesser API, in the best cross platform one available?!? If they wanted to improve it, they should be taking what they can from KDE 3.5. Someone needs to smack somebody at Trolltech - hard.


If anyone has any more details, or knows of planned changes, please post about it in the comments. If I get more details, perhaps I'll do a part 2 in the future.