Author Topic: Drop down menu for code replacement  (Read 3668 times)

Offline Eric

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 263
    • View Profile
Drop down menu for code replacement
« on: June 23, 2014, 02:15:05 PM »
Okay so this may be a HUGE pia to implement or maybe not. Having just finished shooting a PGA tournament where I was faced with 2 or 3 players with "MK" for initials or "JK"  I found it tedious to keep having to try \mk\ then \mk1\ then \mk2\ etc to locate the correct name.  That gave me the idea that it would be grand to be able to type \mk and instead of the second "\" to close the code replacement close it with a different symbol like # and have a popup menu of the replacements associated with that code. Then you could either scroll or click on the correct name.

For example typing in \mk# would result in popup menu of mike king  matt knight max knapp etc...  I'm sure that there are refinements I'm not thinking about but that's the gist of it.

Offline Kirk Baker

  • Senior Software Engineer
  • Camera Bits Staff
  • Superhero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 24730
    • View Profile
    • Camera Bits, Inc.
Re: Drop down menu for code replacement
« Reply #1 on: June 30, 2014, 05:28:48 PM »
Okay so this may be a HUGE pia to implement or maybe not. Having just finished shooting a PGA tournament where I was faced with 2 or 3 players with "MK" for initials or "JK"  I found it tedious to keep having to try \mk\ then \mk1\ then \mk2\ etc to locate the correct name.  That gave me the idea that it would be grand to be able to type \mk and instead of the second "\" to close the code replacement close it with a different symbol like # and have a popup menu of the replacements associated with that code. Then you could either scroll or click on the correct name.

For example typing in \mk# would result in popup menu of mike king  matt knight max knapp etc...  I'm sure that there are refinements I'm not thinking about but that's the gist of it.

It's an interesting idea, but why can't you simply use a slightly longer code to distinguish these different golfers?

mkin = Mike King
mkni = Matt Knight
mkna = Max Knapp

It may be useful to add codes to Photo Mechanic's Autocomplete feature.  You could then make them a little longer and let Autocomplete fill them in for you.

-Kirk

Offline judophotos

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 238
    • View Profile
    • Judophotos
Re: Drop down menu for code replacement
« Reply #2 on: July 01, 2014, 05:49:40 AM »
I would like to add to this topic based on my original usage of iView Media Pro and its descendants. I had used it for a number of years as my only catalogue program but as I added more and more digital images it became unstable when a catalogue got bigger than about 2GB. Because it is a catalogue it may not be relevant to PM which is obviously a browser based program.

One of the great advantages of iView/Media Pro was its ability to accept names or people "on the go". That is you could type the name in, surname first, and if it was on the database the characters would be recognised and the name would come up whether it was 3, 10 or 20 characters typed before it was recognised. Also, just adding a new name would put it permanently on the database of names.

Code replacement is alright for a football match where there are 22 players and the code can be set up before the match but not suitable when you go to an event that has 600 competitors from more than 100 countries over a week or a weekend. In the case of the iView method all the names that have been added over the years are always on the database and it is consistently growing event by event as new competitors move into the sport.

When I was at the London Olympics I briefly met PM's Dennis Walker and gave him my old Media Pro list of competitors and suggested to him that it was an approach worth looking at for PM.

PM's "Persons Shown" field is similar in function but you have to physically type names into the Edit drop down before they are workable. In iView you type it in and it is permanently there for the future. However, if you spell the name wrong you have 2 versions so the database always needs to be cleaned fairly regularly.

Currently with PM I use the Autocomplete function in the Caption field with the iView/Media Pro database as the Text file. It brings the old names up immediately and does still work.

If there was a way of similarly adding names automatically to the Persons Shown field by typing them in with the names being recognised in an "autocomplete" fashion and where needed separating them with a semi-colon then that would be ideal.
David