Feature request: Some improvements to the tagging interface

2018-07-06 00:54:44

First of all I want to say thank you for making the best audio software in the world for all these years!

I am (maybe) halfway through tagging my 3500 album collection with foobar, as it is the best software I have found for this. I'm really impressed by the interface, but after spending all these hours on it for the last 5 years, I think I can suggest some small improvements which would help make the workflow more efficient:

1. When I have several files selected of which certain have nothing in the field and others something, it will show eg.: "<<multiple values>> Nocturne N°02". Now often I want the files which have nothing to also have "Nocturne 2", but clicking in the field one is left with an empty field. It would be much handier to suggest the existing value for all files. If it would be selected, emptying the field would not be much work, yet retyping stuff can quickly get long, so currently the workflow is:
- double click the tag
- select a file which has the value
- copy it
- close the dialog
- click in the field
- paste in the value so all files have the same tag value.

It seems that modifying this behavior should be trivial, yet so helpful. I suggest pseudo code:

Code: [Select]

when user clicks in field
   if is multiple values
      sort values (excluding null/empty string) by number of occurrences
      put first value in field as selected text
   fi

This will also work if there are multiple values.

2. Automatically fill values: This has 2 drop down lists. The first one has "filename", "clipboard: line per track", "other". Often enough I want to use something other than "filename", but that means I first have to set left drop down to other (because otherwise the right drop down is disabled), and when other comes up the right drop down jumps to "%filename%" which yep does the same thing from where we started. This doesn't make sense. I would suggest having only one dropdown which has %filename%, %clipboard% as the first 2 default entries. It can also can have by default all the standard tags and entries that the user has created before.

The second problem with this dialog is that it does more or less the same thing as "Format from other fields". In this latter, one can already input what I suggest above except for %clipboard% which doesn't seem to work. By combining the 2 dialogs into 1, you could create a "Format from other fields" with 2 input drop downs. The one it already has, with the one from "Automatically fill values" that lets you decide to which tags you want piece of the string to go.

I think this would provide all functionality with only one tool, which would be more intuitive. As a second option would be just have only one input dropdown in "Automatically fill values" rather than having 2.

As an added bonus and to make the new "Format from other fields" feel a little more like the current one, one can default the output pattern to the field that is under the mouse when the user right clicks to open the dialog. The first field can default to what the user used last i suppose, or "%filename%"

3. Improvements to the "Edit value" dialog: Make field name a drop down
If this field would be a dropdown, we could work on different fields without having to close the dialog. Now it might seem counter-intuitive now that there is an OK button. If we change the field, the changes that will be applied when clicking OK are no longer obviously visible. On the other hand, the properties dialog already has an ok button to confirm before writing tags to files. So why have a second confirmation? Why not have the edit value dialog be in sync immediately with the properties dialog.
That takes us further. Why not open the "edit value" dialog as soon as the user clicks on a field, rather than double click. Now if we stick it to the right hand side of the properties dialog, so it doesn't obscure the latter, and sync it without having to confirm. Allowing to change the field by just clicking another field in the properties dialog. Combined with the next improvement, this would become a real powerhouse...

4. Improvements to the "Edit value" dialog: Shift/Ctrl select + Paste
When working on a whole list of files it often happens that several files need the same value, but not all. It would be awesome to be able to select several items and paste in all of them with ctrl-v or even better start typing in all of them at once. This prevents having to make the trade-off between pasting one by one or opening properties dialog + "edit values" dialog several times for 4-5 files each time. In practice opening dialogs is quite a burden, so I find myself doing ctrl-v, enter a lot to paste individual values. Being able to shift-click and select half an album at once would make a nice improvement.

5. Improvements to the "Edit value" dialog: Don't make them modal
Imagine having to take data from a site like: https://www.deccaclassics.com/gb/cat/4782282 . The point is that you see the track details only when clicking on the track, but it would hold for anything where you get information track by track (even if you asked someone to read you from the back of an album). Now I need to get recording date and recording location. I currently have 2 choices. Either I go through the entire list twice, or i open and close the "Edit value" dialogs for every track so I can set both values. If I could just have 2 dialogs open one next to the other, I could fill in both values without having to close the windows. Note that fully implementing point 3 would make this redundant.

6. Multi value fields and autocomplete
It is possible to have fields with multiple values by using a ';' separator. However suggestions only work for the first value. I regularly find it annoying to be without support for suggestions when typing several fields (when in doubt about spelling for example)

So, this turned out a bit longer than I had anticipated. I fondly hope foobar stays the best! And thank you so much.

In the hopes that my message in a bottle arrives somewhere!
Naja

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