Summary: Please make use of the $PWD variable for file-picker defaults.

I tend to keep documents (especially presentations) well organised, in a deep directory structure, where each project is in its own directory, together the relevant files (pictures, videos, diagrams etc).

So my workflow goes as follows (names changed for privacy):


0. I'm already at the command line.

1. cd  Documents/consulting/projects/penguins/feeding/
    #I get here rapidly using tab-completion

2. libreoffice herring.odp

3. Now I start to work on the presentation. When I add files (insert pictures, or videos, or use file->open), Impress (or Writer) open the file picker in the *wrong* place; either in my home-directory, or the last place I was looking when I last used L.O. on a different project. Neither is helpful, and it's cognitively jarring to be put into the "wrong" context.

It would be really useful if the file-picker would default to the same path that my presentation is in, rather than elsewhere. 

Might I suggest a heuristic:

1. The current behaviour is fine on Windows, (and maybe even on Linux when the program is launched from the graphical menu.)

2. When starting from the command-line [and especially when the user has changed directory to somewhere different, i.e. where   $PWD != $HOME   ]
then the file-open and insert-file dialogs should default to 
  $(dirname herring.odp)         #or possibly $PWD.


This would be a huge timesaver for programmers, and make LO work similarly to the way that other editors operate.

Thanks for your time.