Bug 242830

Version:           unspecified (using KDE 4.4.4) 
OS:                Linux

Guys,

    One very frustrating aspect of KDE4 is that it doesn't seem to have a clue about what the active directory for opening or saving anything should be. This is a pervasive flaw throughout kde4. For example, if I want to change my wallpaper, I rt-click on the desktop and choose "Desktop Activity Settings.." The dialog appears and I currently have the "time-blue-lt1" wallpaper in use from my ~/img/wp/abstract/scene directory and I now want to choose the 'time-blue-1.jpg' file from the same directory. So right clicking and choosing desktop activities the time-blue-lt1 wallpaper as being current:

(see: kde-noDirHint_01.jpg  -- attached)

    But, instead of taking the "hint" to open the file select dialog in the 'current' ~/img/wp/abstract/scene directory, KDE4 simply opens the file select dialog in the ~/ directory (see attachment _02.jpg) forcing you to navigate img/wp/abstract/scene to get to the same directory as the 'current' wallpaper. 

(attachment: kde-noDirHint_02.jpg)

    This is wrong behavior. Every other desktop, kde3, gnome, etc.. does what modern software is suppose to do -- it anticipates what the user wants to do next and selects the directory from the current file to make changing, doing, opening, whatever -- a more efficient process.

    KDE4 completely fails in this regard. It's like somebody forgot to implement the same logic that we had in KDE3 that made using the desktop very enjoyable and efficient.

    I don't know what the "technical term" for this logic is, but KDE should select the current directory for whatever file is currently being used and present the 'current' directory to the user though the file-open, file-save and file-save-as dialog every time something is chosen or selected. It's the difference between a mature desktop or a hack.

    I expect to have to hunt and work a little harder in PEK or Sawfish, but not in KDE4. Especially since we had the "select the current directory" logic in KDE3. Now this example of changing the wallpaper is just one example. No matter what you do in using or configuring kde4, kde4 fails to provide the user with a logical starting point for getting to the data the user needs and instead just shows your home directory. This seems like some system wide logic could be easily implemented to solve this deficiency. Even something as simple as a bit of BASH basedir logic to set the current dialog directory would be 100% better than providing no such logic. For the wallpaper problem something like:

dlgdir=${wallpaper%/*}

and then setting the starting directory as dlgdir would work.

I'm sure in KDE with all the whizbang inheritance and polymorphism there is some concept of what the "current-object" is. Applying this logic to the current-object should solve the problem.

** attachments to follow


Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
try to do anything in kde -- or use the example above if you can't think of anything else..

Actual Results:  
see above -- I was presented with a file dialog that just dumped me into my home directory

Expected Results:  
to be presented with a file-dialog that has the current directory set to the same directory as the current object in question

Nope -- that's it..