XnView Software

The only date format in the batch rename feature seems to be: YYYY-MM-DD_HH-MN-SS (ex: 2005-01-09_23-43-13)
Is it possible to implement a more flexible format ?

I use the "20050109_234313" style to rename all my pictures accordingly to the EXIF and keep this as an index in all versions of a picture => the shorter (still readable), the better.
And I guess that other people would love other date formats too...

Maybe a more detailled Date interpreter could be used ?
Something like: <Date Taken [options]> with options following some kind of standard (as can be seen here).


Another suggestion:
Could you please implement a special index that increment only to avoid duplicates ?
As an exemple: if I take 4 shots, with the first 3 in the same second and the last one on the following second, they would be named:
- 20050109_234313A.jpg
- 20050109_234313B.jpg
- 20050109_234313C.jpg
- 20050109_234314A.jpg
(with choice of Letters or Numbers + number of characters + used always or only when needed to avoid duplicates)

Thank you,

Olivier

Olivier_G wrote:The only date format in the batch rename feature seems to be: YYYY-MM-DD_HH-MN-SS (ex: 2005-01-09_23-43-13)
Is it possible to implement a more flexible format ?

I use the "20050109_234313" style to rename all my pictures accordingly to the EXIF and keep this as an index in all versions of a picture => the shorter (still readable), the better.
And I guess that other people would love other date formats too...

Maybe a more detailled Date interpreter could be used ?
Something like: <Date Taken [options]> with options following some kind of standard (as can be seen here).

Yes, important feature i think. But what is the best. An option to choose the format of date/time, or separate item like Year, Month, Day, ....

I much prefer the separate items in the interpreter, for flexibility.
People would be able to use <Date Taken [B, d, YYYY]> to get "January, 10, 2005" if they want to.
And keeping those separate items optional (ie: if you only use <Date Taken> you get the usual "2005-01-10_14-01-31") will not make the program more complex to use (the detailled date/time items should be documented, though).

Another suggestion on the same topic:
It would be great to support the "\" character in order to be able to create automatically directories and subdirectories with the files (great for organizing pictures after downloading from the camera).

Olivier

xnview wrote:... Yes, important feature i think. But what is the best. An option to choose the format of date/time, or separate item like Year, Month, Day, ....

I second Olivier's opinion and would also like to have separate items.

Initially I thought of having individual placeholders (e.g. <Creation Date Day>, but this could make name template very long.

So I also vote for a format notation (e.g. <Creation Date [dd.mm.YYYY]>). Format notations have some drawbacks: One has to know about the feature, its usage and the notation. We should tackle these with extra information (tooltip, info on the dialog, and/or Online help. Documenting this would be easy if an existing notation would be used. See Olivier's link to the date utility, above).

Since templates are more complicated to write, there should be a recent list of templates, then. When deleting recent file lists, the recent list of templates should not be affected, or only if the user really wants and confirms this.

xnview wrote:Another suggestion on the same topic:
It would be great to support the "" character in order to be able to create automatically directories and subdirectories with the files (great for organizing pictures after downloading from the camera).

Another good suggestion.

helmut wrote:So I also vote for a format notation (e.g. <Creation Date [dd.mm.YYYY]>).

Me too

And what about "MMM" (JAN, FEB, MAR...) or "Mmm" (Jan, Feb, Mar...) ? Because month and day might be confusing sometimes, there is a different order in different countries.

Dreamer wrote:

helmut wrote:So I also vote for a format notation (e.g. <Creation Date [dd.mm.YYYY]>).

Me too

And what about "MMM" (JAN, FEB, MAR...) or "Mmm" (Jan, Feb, Mar...) ? Because month and day might be confusing sometimes, there is a different order in different countries.

Ok

Dreamer wrote:... And what about "MMM" (JAN, FEB, MAR...) or "Mmm" (Jan, Feb, Mar...) ? Because month and day might be confusing sometimes, there is a different order in different countries.

The description of the date command has really many options. I guess that Pierre will add the ones which might be useful and actually used for XnView.

A big "Thank You" to Pierre for the implementation of those Batch Rename improvements: it is great, it works as expected and it is useful
Bravo!

Olivier