I want to use XnViewMP to start a slideshow upon a hotkey or after 5 Minutes of idletime (a screensaver in windows). And then I want to be able to press buttons to assign categories and ratings during the slideshow. I have thousands of photos and let the slideshow run constantly next to me. I cannot motivate myself to do this in the browser window but it is feasible to just have the slideshow run and press "F" to assign an image to the category "favorite" and press 5 to give it a five star rating and press "k" to assign it to the category "kids" and "s" to assign it to the category "sports".
I used autohotkey to make most of it work, but categories do not work in quickslideshow. For now I got to the point where i use the "MouseClick" command in autohotkey to go to the no rating smart album to start a quick slideshow with all the images that have no rating yet - pretty unreliable but I didn't find another way. And I can assign color labels in the quick slideshow - but only one per image, not various like with categories.
So my proposal is to make a slideshow standalone that starts a smart album, uses few resources and allows hotkeys for all functions of metadata editing. That is the way I can see myself succeed in labeling my 50 000+ collection of photos and let slideshows run according to category (via smart album) during visits of certain groups (the sports association, the family meeting, etc). I do think this is something lots of people could use?!
Or at least allow hotkeys in the normal slideshow so it can be called from the command line (please with a smart album option - pretty please!)
And allow category hotkeys in the slideshow.
You could make a setting to allow or disallow the view-mode hotkeys in slideshow.
PS: I found out that category hotkeys only work in browser mode but only if they do not conflict with color label hotkeys - but they do not work in view mode or quick slideshow. (I have even tried to make an "automatic manual" slideshow in viewmode with autohotkey pushing the right button every 10 seconds, but category hotkeys don't work there either).
Thanks for any answer, if there is a way to do what I want to do with the existing functionality I would be most happy for advice !
I come from JRiver Media Center for renaming my photo collection and am very happy I found a freeware version that can do all the amazing things XnViewMP can do! I am ready to chip in in translation... (German, English, Spanish)