Custom list of images

[PavelH]

Hi and thank you for reading my post. I have discovered xnView only recently and I have been very happy with it and very impressed. Unfortunately I have also encountered a strange problem that I hope is just a bad options setting on my part and not a part of the actual design. The situation is this:
When you have a folder of images regardless of the View type (details, list, thumbnails, etc), you can sort them by name, size etc. But obviously sometimes you want to restructure their order. You grab a file with your LMB and drag it to another place on the list or among thumbnails and release the LMB to change the order of those images. I use this option very often. Unfortunately with xnView, what LMB+drag does is... it create a copy??? This can't be right! It makes no sense whatsoever unless I missed something. I bet I have just set some setting badly. but I cannot find anything. Could anyone kindly help me, please? I am totally lost and totally at your mercy

Best regards,

PH

[marsh]

Duplicating images is one of the oldest features (for v1.x). Perhaps a menu item 'duplicate' would make it more anticipated.
In the MP beta, custom file reordering is possible by drag and drop of one thumbnail directly over another.

[PavelH]

Thanks for your reply, M
So the LMB+drag really ONLY does "create copy"? There is no way to change order of images in XnView? If that is true, then that's very bad for me to put it mildly. My old AcdSee 5.0 from 2002(!!!) - the only image manager that ever did exactly what I need - keeps crashing on my new Win7 so I have been looking around for some replacement, but w/o the above mentioned feature - I don't know whether I can use xnView. I will probably have to go back to the grandpa from 2002 and just put up with its crashes. Oh my, this is bad
Thanks for mentioning the XnView MP though. It does the restructuring just right, but it is obviously in development, so we will see. I have not seen an image manager with an interface as flexible as that of AcdSee 5, but I can still hope that this new app can beat it. Is there any place to read more about it, pls? About what's it supposed to be about, what's it supposed to provide, etc? It looks very much like xnView, but the MP probably stands for Media Player so there will be some differences.

Thanks,
PH

[JohnFredC]

Hi Pavel H.

This has been a relatively persistent (if low-key) topic over the years here in the forum. As you have discovered, the current version of XnView for Windows (1.97x and prior) does not support user sequencing of images in the browser... and as Marsh pointed out above, the alternate development path for XnView (named MP at the present time) DOES support user drag-and-drop sequencing.

For XnView MP, a user created custom sequence of images is stored in the image folder in a hidden text file called .xnviewsort, which can be opened in a text editor for inspection/modification. There is no apparent reason one couldn't prepare such a file by hand for use in MP.

In my experience, until recently only a few Windows image viewers support this valuable functionality, but developers are beginning to recognize the benefits and are responding.

One of the issues for XnView for Windows (should custom sort be implemented there) is where to save the custom sort order data so that the custom sequence persists after the user leaves the folder. Should it be saved in the folder with the images (this is how MP does it and my personal preference) or should it be saved in the central thumbs database...? This is a subset of a general debate about the best location(s) for saving XnView metadata.

Also, the entire GUI associated with user-defined image sequences needs to take into account the various places such sequences apply: slideshows, web page galleries, the browser, the compositor ("Strip of images") etc., etc.

Finally user-defined image sequencing is related to the broader (and more complex) topics of lightbox functionality, image stacking, and virtual copies, all of which are very useful functions and would be welcome in XnView.

[PavelH]

Hi JFC!

Thanks for a very nice reply.

I am looking into the MP version and I look forward to its release. User defined order of files works very nicely there. I use this function very often to change the order of files and then rename them in a batch with incremental numbering so that the images are sorted in order when they are browsed thru anytime later. That's the main though not the only reason I need this for. Fortunately I have discovered that xnView provides a solution in this direction - changing order of files in the rename batch window. It's not as fast especially with its small thumbnail window, but it will do for now. I am very glad I can stick with this application as I very much enjoy the overall feel of it.

>One of the issues for XnView for Windows (should custom sort be implemented there) is where to save the custom sort order data so that the custom sequence persists after the user leaves the folder. Should it be saved in the folder with the images (this is how MP does it and my personal preference) or should it be saved in the central thumbs database...? This is a subset of a general debate about the best location(s) for saving XnView metadata.

Personally I would choose the single database for one reason: I have set the files with the hidden attribute ON to be visible on my system for more control. Any such file (e.g. desktop.ini, thumbs.db, etc) creates a kind of a mess. For me personally this wouldn't be a big problem either way but generally speaking, I think it is best for any application to leave as few traces as possible.

>Finally user-defined image sequencing is related to the broader (and more complex) topics of lightbox functionality, image stacking, and virtual copies, all of which are very useful functions and would be welcome in XnView.

I have never had much use for these options, but I find them very intriguing and quite advanced. Almost wish I had some use for them so that I can fool around with them

Best regards,

PH