Is there any way to change the file selection configuration?

[Chris Green]

I find the file selection window that appears when loading or saving
files from (most) applications very confusing.

There's two issues:-

    It often goes to the 'Recent' location which isn't actually a
    directory, it's just a list of files/directories that have been
    recently accessed.  I'd really rather not have this as it's not
    a 'real' directory, I just find it confusing.

    If I run (for example) atril from the command line it doesn't show
    me the current directory when I 'Open file' it shows me the some
    directory I have previously used, often months ago.  Is there any
    way to simply tell programs to use a file opening dialog in the
    current directory?

-- 
Chris Green