How to fix many bugs tied with Renaming folders/files

[m.Th.]

When we want to rename a file/folder we encounter many problems:

Wrong dialogs appearing at rename (very annoying): http://newsgroup.xnview.com/viewtopic.php?f=62&t=29254

Misaligned Rename edit boxes if the thumbs are small enough: (ugly)

Rename-Problem-1.jpg (25.73 KiB) Viewed 1518 times

Hidden Rename edit boxes if the name of the folder is big enough and deep enough: (painful basic usability failure)

Rename-Problem-2.jpg (5.58 KiB) Viewed 1518 times

(yes, the folder edited above is called 'Test Flash Bender with Gel' - go figure how I edited it )

The solution for all these:

Rename Popup Windows

Popup-Rename.jpg (11.84 KiB) Viewed 1518 times

the screen shot is from FSViewer... ...but XnView Classic has one. Why we don't have it anymore?

Advantages:

- no more spurious annoying problems when the user press {Cancel}

- no more bounding problems. The window will be centered on screen.

- Auto-Correct support. A big plus.

- Trimming support. A big problem with these programs is that when one copies the file/folder name from an email (or elsewhere), many times copies also some special characters like tab (#9) enter (#13) or line-feed(#10). By having a popup window one can very easy remove these chars before sending them to the OS.

- Hiding the extension. Yeah, a good thing to have. We have it but only in a half. I like much better the version from XnView Classic. Why it was abolished?

[orbspider]

myself, I rather like the in-box renaming of a file when click on the name - a pop up dialogue would be too in my face.

but the hidden rename box in folder pane is not very good.

[m.Th.]

myself, I rather like the in-box renaming of a file when click on the name - a pop up dialogue would be too in my face.

but the hidden rename box in folder pane is not very good.

I think that this were Pierre's thoughts also when he switched from XnView Classic pop-up mode to in-place mode. However it brings more disadvantages than advantages. Both human (usability) and technical (auto-correct, trimming, Insert Date/Time and/or other fields, clear separation of events: Open Edit, Close Edit with Ok, with Cancel etc.)

Also from my programming experience, is very painful, tricky (and sometimes impossible) to do what you want with the in-place editor.

[m.Th.]

...aside of the advantages from my 1st post, there are another ones:

- The ability to insert other info like date/time etc.:

Rename-Dlg.png (10.6 KiB) Viewed 1466 times

- The ability to elegantly handle the multiple-files selection: - if the program will have its custom handler for F2 then if the SelectionCount>1 show the Batch Rename dialog, otherwise show the above one.

[JohnFredC]

This ties in with my idea for an "automatic" versioning engine.

In addition to Save and SaveAs there would be SaveVersion...

The user would initially select a version format. For subsequent SaveVersion calls, XnView would then auto-increment the version based on a scan of existing "versioned" files with the same "stem" in the current folder.

Such a function could be built into the Renaming dialog also and an Option to embed the version in the image metadata would be useful.

Over the years, I've often wondered why such simple-to-implement features have not made their ways into the various system dialogs of graphics tools. Sometimes it is more work simply keeping track of a variety of similar image files than it was to make them in the first place.

[m.Th.]

This ties in with my idea for an "automatic" versioning engine.

In addition to Save and SaveAs there would be SaveVersion...

The user would initially select a version format. For subsequent SaveVersion calls, XnView would then auto-increment the version based on a scan of existing "versioned" files with the same "stem" in the current folder.

Such a function could be built into the Renaming dialog also and an Option to embed the version in the image metadata would be useful.

Over the years, I've often wondered why such simple-to-implement features have not made their ways into the various system dialogs of graphics tools. Sometimes it is more work simply keeping track of a variety of similar image files than it was to make them in the first place.

Yes. Generally is a much better approach because you control the GUI (the form) and you can put everything what you want there and, also, you can have the control on {Ok} and {Cancel} buttons. It seems that the bug from http://newsgroup.xnview.com/viewtopic.php?f=62&t=29254 is caused by a wrong processing for {Cancel/Esc} and/or wrong order of events/signals. A mess which can be easily solved with a dedicated dialog for Rename.