When you open a file in GIMP, there’s a “Show all files” checkbox on the down left corner. Also, there’s a “CTRL-H” shortcut that hides/shows hidden files (like dot files).
This is very confusing. There’s nowhere says about ctrl-h on the open files menu, and I only found it by searching the web. Well ofc i guess you can find it in the keybinding setting menu too. Plus, why we need two controls - a checkbox and a shortcut - to hide/show files? The “Show all files” already suggests this checkbox hides some files, but how would users expect there’s another control to hide more files?
I’d suggest adding another checkbox to do what ctrl-h would do, or, merge these 2 controls into one checkbox.
By default the file dialog only shows you files that are identified as images files.
“Show all files” shows you files that are not identified as image files (text, spreadsheet, etc…). As such it is a very specific application setting, that has nothing to do with the filesystem “hidden” files.
Note that the file chooser uses MS-DOS-style file extensions to determine which files to show; if an image file has a name ending in .xml it will not be shown by default, even if it happens to be an SVG image.