So I recently decided to abandon my old gtk2-based editor after some +15 years, largely because I can no longer compile gtk2 from source, for reasons related to the glib stack (something has been deprecated and I don't know the workaround, but I can no longer wait for anyone upstream patching gtk2, so I now took the full dive finally).

I toyed with the idea of sublime, but I think I am less likely to adjust sublime towards behaviour I am quite use, as opposed to geany, which is open source. So I'll give geany a more serious try this time. I used it in the past, e. g. for C++ files, but not yet for all files. Right now I am using geany for ALL files.

There are many small issues but I don't want to spam the issue tracker with tons of ideas that are possibly only for my own use case. Nonetheless I hope to be able to convince the geany devs towards more flexibility in general, via options and preferences we could toggle as-is. Geany already supports quite many options, so I hope we can support even more options - if they make sense.

Alright - now to the issue here.

First, have a look at this screenshot:

https://i.imgur.com/mWzOafF.png

You can see the open files. Evidently I am currently modifying a german exam question test for evolution of hominids / hominidae :D - the key issue, though, is the pop-up widget that shows the opened files.

The currently selected file is shown in bold - that is nice.

However had, often I can not tell WHERE the files are. Some may be same-named or similarly-named, so I would like to also have the option to show the full path right there (left-padded, e. g. all are aligned towards the left-side, but on the right side we may allow overflow; the full widget width would thus be determined by the file with the longest name.)

I am very much used to that behaviour from my old editor, where I can see the full path at all times.

So, my issue request would be for geany to add an option to show the FULL path instead, rather than the truncated path (in ruby, the filename itself would be obtained via File.basename(), so instead I would be looking for File.absolute_path() - not sure how C does this but perhaps gtk has some method that shows the full path).

In the option dialogue, we would then have to add a new entry at **Preferences -> Files**; perhaps call it, as a check-button, "Show full path of files". This would NOT be the default, so everyone could enjoy the current behaviour of geany, rather than adjust to the one proposed in this issue request.

As for a more objective rationale for this feature: we would instantly know where the file resides at. (Actually, my old editor not only made the current file bold, but used different colours too. But I am perfectly fine without colours here too, I just need the feature that I know the full path at all times, as this is less confusing to me than merely the short-filename itself as such.)