File selection dialog box always reverts to small size

[peterfreeth]

Hello all.

Scribus Version 1.5.7.svn on Ubuntu 21.04 - but this is the case with any current version of Scribus e.g. 1.4.6

When I open a file or select an image to insert into an image frame, a file chooser dialog opens as you would expect. The size is always tiny, with a very small area showing file names, and always in a 'thumbnail' type of layout with file names going across and down. I can see only 10 file names at a time, which makes it very difficult to select the image file that I need. I can resize the box, change the layout, and next time I select an image, it's back to the tiny size.

I think that this has always been a problem with Scribus, but it's only starting to irritate me now as I am putting a photo book together, using hundreds of images. I imagine that for people doing mainly image work such as magazines, children's books and photo albums, this would make Scribus pretty much unusable.

It doesn't seem to be a Qt issue, the people on the Qt forum says that the dialog looks Scribus specific.

What can I do to change this, so that Scribus remembers the last dialog layout and size that I used?

[RodneyLee]

Just drag and drop images on to your pages

[peterfreeth]

Nice idea, I thought I had tried that without success.

[RodneyLee]

Drag and drop works great  in 1.5.7 linux mint 20, and is very fast

[dragonfly]

I am not using Scribus currently and so this is just an idea from the sidelines.
I have found that sometimes it pays to work in concert with other tools.
That is in a "toolchain".

If you have hundreds of images to select from during writing then this is a natural case for using automation scripts.

One tool comes to mind for Ubuntu (I am in Ubuntu 20.04).
You could install Albert and designate a hot key to list the images you are searching through then copy and paste into Scribus.  A python extension to Albert will do this.  This is faster than drag and drop.

In Mac the tool would be Alfred.

There are other such automation tools and some trial and error is needed. But in essence you hop between two or more tools to complete a task.  Scribus Scripter should also be considered.