93487 - need to set default directory in Composer

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(SeaMonkey :: Composer, defect)

Description

[Mitch Green]

From Bugzilla Helper:
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:0.9.2)
Gecko/20010726 Netscape6/6.1
BuildID:    Netscape 6.1 PR 1

I dislike not being able to preset a default directory location in Composer. 
This feature was included in older versions and should be included in this version.
Having this feature would make Composer more user friendly.  Currently,
everytime I want to change a webpage, I must traverse through a stack of
directories on the appropriate drive to find the files I want to use.  My web
page files are kept in a single location.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. try
2.
3.

Actual Results:  doesn't save default

Expected Results:  should

Comment 1

[Kathleen :Brade]

-->editor

As a workaround, you might use the "recently edited pages" (under the File menu) 
if it's for files you regularly edit.

Comment 2

[rubydoo123]

I don't recall a setting in preferences where you set a default directory on
your HD, can you point me to the preference setting?

Comment 3

[Charles Manske]

I agree -- I implemented the feature in 4.7 and liked it very much.
It is not a user preference. What I did was remember the last directory you save
to in a pref when you save a file, and use that as the initial directory for
further file open/saves. Thus if you change the "default directory" via another
program or by doing a file open/save from the browser, it doesn't upset the 
"last used" Composer directory.

Comment 4

[rubydoo123]

that is really odd, on win98 when I edit a document and save it in directory
C:/foo/bar and then edit another page and select save, that is the directory
that is initially displayed. If I close out the app and then do a save, the
default directory is the directory location that the app is in. Are you tlaking
about across edit sessions, or in the same edit session Charley?

Comment 5

[Charles Manske]

Beth: Are describing behavior in 4.7 or 6.x?

Comment 6

[Jussi-Pekka Mantere]

Removing nsenterprise nomination, adding nsBranch.

Comment 7

[Jaime Rodriguez, Jr.]

Since is targeted for 1.0, marking as nsbranch- for this round.

Comment 8

[Syd Logan]

spam composer change

Comment 9

[Charles Manske]

load balancing

Comment 10

[Charles Manske]

*** Bug 115806 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 11

[Charles Manske]

Attachment: fix

Notes:
editor.js: Set/Get Unichar prefs code was moved to editorUtilities -- these 
should be used for URL string prefs.
Changes in ComposerCommands.js are in nsOpenCommand code and
PromptForSaveLocation(), which is used when saving files. 
General strategy is to save the last-used directory to a pref for each filetype

used by Composer. gFilePickerDirectory in the editor window is used to save and

reset the current directory used by other modules.

Comment 12

[Syd Logan]

Comment on attachment 62295 [details] [diff] [review]
fix

looks ok, r=syd

Comment 13

[Joe Hewitt (gone)]

Comment on attachment 62295 [details] [diff] [review]
fix

sr=hewitt

Comment 14

[Charles Manske]

checked in

Comment 15

[Kathleen :Brade]

I don't think this bug was fixed correctly.  On Macintosh, we might be pointing
to the wrong location (which could be *very* annoying).  We shouldn't save the
preference as a string but as whatever the equivalent of an nsIFile is (if
possible).

Comment 16

[Charles Manske]

I don't understand how we can be pointing to the "wrong location". It saves the
last location used by the Open File dialog and saves them as UniChar pref strings
just as we do for the Recent Files menu.
Do you have an example where it doesn't work?

Comment 17

[Kathleen :Brade]

Strings are a "lossy" format on Mac for file locations.  That is exactly why we
have nsIFile / nsILocalFile.  A better fix will use that type of preference
instead of a string.

Comment 18

[Charles Manske]

Attachment: Save directory as nsILocalFile

Previous patch (checked in) was still valid for all callers of
Set/SaveSetFilePickerDirectory(). This patch enhances those methods to save
pref
as nsILocalFile instead of the "file:" URL, as Brade suggested.
Kathy: Can you please test this on Mac?

Comment 19

[Charles Manske]

Well, I could have sworn this worked on Windows in initial testing, but now I'm
finding that the filepicker's "displayDirectory" returned is always my VC++
project directory, not the one I used to select a file. Weird.

Comment 20

[Charles Manske]

moving milestone.
Note that the existing fix checked in no longer works because of a new bug in
FilePicker (bug to be filed soon).

Comment 21

[Charles Manske]

Attachment: Updated fix to use nsILocalFile for prefs

This uses the filePicker.file.parent to get the directory of the file picked
by user, which gets around current problems in filepicker (displayDirectory
is *not* the last user location; Bill Law is fixing this in Windows but it's
not
clear if displayDirectory should do that anyway!)

Comment 22

[Bill Law]

Comment on attachment 66220 [details] [diff] [review]
Updated fix to use nsILocalFile for prefs

r=law

Comment 23

[Daniel Veditz [:dveditz]]

Comment on attachment 66220 [details] [diff] [review]
Updated fix to use nsILocalFile for prefs

sr=dveditz

Comment 24

[Charles Manske]

checked in.

Comment 25

[michael wendell]

Verified on Win 2k using the 01-27 trunk build, and Mac OSX using the 01-28
trunk build.