[ANN] New picture chooser for Ubuntu

[Bob Warren]

Colleagues:

You might remember that some time ago I released a pair of file/picture 
chooser widgets for Ubuntu Linux. These widgets still work OK, but they 
will no longer detect the presence of a floppy diskette drive if your 
computer has one. This is because Ubuntu (or possibly Gnome) have been 
mucking about with the system of detecting the floppy's presence, and 
there are still unsolved problems. Even though floppies are on their way 
out, file choosers that ignor the possibility of their existence would 
be incomplete to say the least. For that reason, I am developing a new 
pair of choosers, and the picture chooser (the most important) is ready.

In addition to restoring the correct functioning of these chooser 
widgets, I have decided to make them a bit prettier. This current 
version does not include all the bells and whistles that were originally 
suggested by you and planned for #2, but at least the drive tree view 
now includes images of little folders (closed or open) to replace the 
"+" and "--" symbols used previously for the purpose of representing the 
nodes.

Here is a picture:

http://www.howsoft.com/runrev/downloads/new_picture_chooser.png 
<http://www.howsoft.com/runrev/downloads/new_picture_chooser.png>

The colour of the folders can be changed. Here is the available list of 
colours:

red (the default)
blue
cherry
cyan
darkblue
darkbrown
darkgreen
darkgrey
grey
lightbrown
lightgreen
mauve
white
yellow

This new standalone picture chooser widget can be used as a substitute 
together with the original pack available at 
http://www.howsoft.com/runrev/stacks.htm . Just substitute the original 
program (_picture_chooser) with the new version. To specify a different 
colour, you need to add an additional line to the _picture_chooser.ini file.

The new picture chooser can be downloaded from:

http://www.howsoft.com/runrev/downloads/new_picture_chooser.zip 
<http://www.howsoft.com/runrev/downloads/new_picture_chooser.zip>

Shortly, I shall be releasing an entirely new demo pack including a new 
file chooser as well, together with a revised stack that shows how to 
call both standalone widgets.

Of course, for file choosers to be as complete as they are in Windows, 
it is necessary to enable the operator to select a file from his local 
network directly in addition to his local machine. This was the purpose 
of my recent "Samba" thread, but as you must have observed, I didn't 
manage to obtain sufficient information to be able to implement it. Who 
knows, time solves many problems, so I hope to be able to incorporate 
network navigation into my chooser widgets as soon as the opportunity 
arises.

Any comments would be most welcome.

Regards,
Bob Warren