m.Th. wrote:...to add: {Save All} button in fact doesn't do anything. Why not remove it? (I think that it is the best solution - otherwise Pierre must rework the entire workflow)
I use it all the time - far more often than making a multiple selection and then writing individual files.
The difficulty is in remembering what options have been set on the options tab:
- Keep original if new value is empty
- Replace only if original value is empty
I have needed to use different combinations of these at different times. And that is part of the minefield that is multi-file multi-field updating.
And it is because of these options that you cannot have a simple "overwrite with the current field values" or similar, as the outcome depends on the options, the present file contents and the present dialog box field contents.
And that is before you get to the extra option for appending keywords to the current file contents.
One thing I have always disliked about XnViewMP compared to classic is that the options are hidden on their own tab in MP and I regularly forget about them and end up not updating what I expected or else overwriting more than I wanted to change.
And now, reading what Pierre said about the "clear all fields" I have just realised that I had forgotten what it was for (assuming I ever knew).
XnView Classic used the button "write all selected" rather than "save all" and I think the longer version is better.
By pressing {Save All} indeed it saves the respective fields from all files. However in order to modify the fields from next files we must press ">" (or "<") which triggers a Save by itself. If, after pressing ">" we respond to "Overwrite?" with "No" the metadadata is lost. Hence the metadata is not kept in memory for all files, just for the current one. Then what purpose {Save All} really have?
I think if the bug was fixed where it only asked to save if the file needed saving then this would be less of a problem. There would be less need to hide the dialog