[Qgis-developer] File Browsing From inside QGIS

[Tom Elwertowski]

Mars Sjoden wrote:
> I would like to ask if there is any hint at fixing the "file browser" 
> performance bug within QGIS in the next release for Mac OSX?
> 
> It is painfully slow waiting for the OSX pinwheel to stop spinning when 
> trying to add a data file to QGIS.

This is a problem with the Mac implementation of QFileDialog. A three line Qt program which does nothing but prompt for a file using the non-native dialog also spins the pinwheel for the same amount of time.

The performance penalty is a cost of using a write once, run everywhere development strategy. Qt supports adding extra controls to file dialogs by using its own non-native dialog implementation. To improve performance, a Mac-specific file dialog implementation is needed in place of QFileDialog which could add extra controls (the Encoding popup) directly to a native Mac dialog.

I don't expect the file dialog to be rewritten soon. Although slow, it works and I would rather see additional QGIS features added or bugs fixed.

Tom