Can I change gtk's open location file completion behavior?

From: Steve Mading (madings_at_crayfish.bmrb.wisc.edu)
Date: 09/21/05 

Date: Wed, 21 Sep 2005 21:37:23 +0000 (UTC)

Ever since I switched to Fedora Core 3, I've been extremely
annoyed with the new firefox installation because it uses
GTK's file open dialog, which is terrible at letting you
type in the filename yourself. Firstly it has no obvious
way to type in a filename to get to a different path. It
looks like you have to navigate the filenames by clicking
on directories to get to the path you want. Eventually I
found through google searching that there is a hidden hotkey
that will bring up a filename dialog box (you hit CTRL-L,
which is not hinted at anywhere in the interface). But THAT
is annoying because it performs autocompletion. Now, don't
get me wrong, autocompletion is great, when *I* trigger it
by hitting tab or something, but the GTK filename dialog
box triggers autocompletion without me doing anything to
make it happen. So as soon as the dialog box knows what
directory I meant, it fills in the rest for me even if I'm
still trying to type it.

So If I type "/home/myname/one_project", for example, and
the "ho" was enough for the program to know I meant "/home",
and the "m" was enough for the program to know I meant
"myname", and the "one_p" was enough for the program to know
I meant "one_project", then what I actually end up with in
the box is this:
   "/homeme/mynameyname/one_projectroject"
(Because it was autocompleting while I was still typing the
rest of the name)

So my questions are:
1) Is there any way to fix this behavior in GTK's file
dialog box? Something that either turns autocompletion
off, or at the very least makes it's autocompletion work
the way it should (by either not completing until I hit
tab (like on the bash prompt) or by watching what I type
to see if it's just the continuation of what was
autocompleted, and only start inserting characters when
what I type differs from what was autocompleted (like
the openoffice file dialogs do).)

2) Is there a way to configure firefox to stop using the
GTK file open dialog and instead use something else? I
don't normally use Gnome apps (I use KDE), so if
I can't change this behavior of the GTK file dialog that's
okay so long as I can get firefox to stop using it.

What I'm doing at work requires that I repeatedly test a
website which has a file/browse field on an HTML form, so
the fact that the file-open dialog is clunky at switching
between directories in different paths is getting to be
a real annoyance. (To give an idea of why it's annoying,
I'm typically switching between a directory called something
like this:
  /home/myname/abc/def/ghi/jklmn/opq/
And one called something like this:
  /network_share1/myname/123/456/7890/
  
Having to repeatedly drop back to the root dir
and click,scroll,scroll,/click/click,scroll,scroll
scroll/click to get to the right directory is
very time consuming, especially when I already know
the exact dir name, and have typed it repeatedly
in the past so I'm fast at it.

-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
 Steven L. Mading at BioMagResBank (BMRB). UW-Madison
 Programmer/Analyst/(sometimes SysAdmin) mailto:madings@bmrb.wisc.edu
 B1108C, Biochem Addition / 433 Bab*** Dr / Madison, WI 53706-1544

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