Sundry PM feature requests

[MikeA]

Help system: the ability (Preferences dialog) to select either web-based help or the PDF file supplied with the program, when Help > Photo Mechanic Help is selected.

Moving or copying files via the GUI: when files are dragged from the contact sheet to a folder icon shown in the folder list, the folder over which the pointer is hovering would be highlighted as is the case with, say, Win Explorer -- just a visual confirmation.

Default IPTC file location: an explicit option for a default folder to contain .IPTC files. This might already be covered by one of the other default file location options, but I'm not sure which.

Editable text fields: for these fields in the Preferences dialog:

Location of Exporter templates
Location of use HTML templates
Location of Uploader templates

Reason: it's easy via several approaches* to copy a path to the clipboard. It's way faster to paste such data into an editable text field than it is to use the standard Browse For Folder control and then click...click...click (I wish that dialog box also had an editable text field -- and some programs have such a dialog box, though it's probably a custom dialog rather than done via some standard API call).


(* Can be done directly at the command line if you're using the 4NT/Take Command command processor (probably can be done some way with cmd.exe, too), or via one of several freeware Copy Path To Clipboard shell extension installers (Win XP) -- it's supported "natively" in Vista. Can also be done from a folder window's Address field.)

[Kirk Baker]

Help system: the ability (Preferences dialog) to select either web-based help or the PDF file supplied with the program, when Help > Photo Mechanic Help is selected.

We don't include the PDF manual in the installer since it just makes the download for trial users that much larger.

Moving or copying files via the GUI: when files are dragged from the contact sheet to a folder icon shown in the folder list, the folder over which the pointer is hovering would be highlighted as is the case with, say, Win Explorer -- just a visual confirmation.

You want the Navigator to hilight the 'to be dropped onto folder' ?

Default IPTC file location: an explicit option for a default folder to contain .IPTC files. This might already be covered by one of the other default file location options, but I'm not sure which.

Are you talking about when saving from the IPTC Stationery Pad?  Why not just use snapshots?  They're faster and easier both for saving and for loading?

Editable text fields: for these fields in the Preferences dialog:

Location of Exporter templates
Location of user HTML templates
Location of Uploader templates

Reason: it's easy via several approaches* to copy a path to the clipboard. It's way faster to paste such data into an editable text field than it is to use the standard Browse For Folder control and then click...click...click (I wish that dialog box also had an editable text field -- and some programs have such a dialog box, though it's probably a custom dialog rather than done via some standard API call).

(* Can be done directly at the command line if you're using the 4NT/Take Command command processor (probably can be done some way with cmd.exe, too), or via one of several freeware Copy Path To Clipboard shell extension installers (Win XP) -- it's supported "natively" in Vista. Can also be done from a folder window's Address field.)

There is nothing special about them. They're just intentionally disabled text fields.  If we make them editable then we have to validate them as well since a user could then type all kinds of invalid gibberish into them.  If they're only filled out by picking from a folder picker dialog then this is impossible.  How often do you change these paths?  If you're changing them more often than once then you're probably doing something wrong with the folder layout on your system.  They're a "set it and forget it" preference.

-Kirk

[MikeA]

>We don't include the PDF manual in the installer since it just makes the
>download for trial users that much larger.

Understood, and that's a perfectly good reason not to include it in the installer. I'd still like to suggest an option to configure the PDF file as what appears when F1 is pressed. If the user has made an error in terms of the file's location, they'd either get an error message or else the usual on-line help on the web would appear.

>You want the Navigator to hilight the 'to be dropped onto folder' ?

Yes, please -- emphasize it in some way, however minor.

>Are you talking about when saving from the IPTC Stationery Pad?

Saving from or loading into, yes.

>Why not just use snapshots?
>They're faster and easier both for saving and for loading?

They're faster but they are somewhat less 'discoverable' in terms of their file locations. (It does kinda beg the question, though -- if snapshots are faster and easier for saving and loading, then why have the Load... and Save... buttons in the stationery dialogs at all?)

Regarding editable text fields:

>There is nothing special about them. They're just intentionally disabled
>text fields.  If we make them editable then we have to validate them as well
>since a user could then type all kinds of invalid gibberish into them.

That's true. It's what I see at work every day: any time you permit user input, you have to treat it as potentially "suspect" until it's validated. But you are already doing this kind of user-input validation. For example, in the latest beta at least, if I try to rename a file within the contact sheet and if I try to use "<" or ">" or "|" in the new name, I get a <beep!>. The program blocks use of those characters (I can use "%" and "+", though -- neither of them "DOS-legal" characters). IOW, you do already have such validating code in the program.

>If they're only filled out by picking from
>a folder picker dialog then this is impossible.

I'm talking about an either/or situation here. You have the path in the clipboard? Paste it into the field and have done with it. Otherwise, pick it from the folder-picker dialog. But aside from the preferences dialog:

>How often do you change these paths?

I don't change default paths often. But that is not the only time a "folder picker" dialog box appears when the program is used.

[MikeA]

But...something else occurred to me having to do with the functionality I'm after via the editable-text-field-in-select-folder window -- the functionality being way faster operation than is possible with that irritating tree-control(*). Could you customize the "Send To" menu so that a folder could be right-clicked and "sent to" PM?

... a few minutes later. Nope, doesn't work -- though it works if if you go into the directory in question and right-click an image file's name. Then its parent directory opens as a contact sheet (though not as a "Favorite").

But huh, lookee here, there's a shell extension already available that I hadn't seen before -- an "open in Photo Mechanic" item in Explorer context menus. Then it occurred to me...could there be command-line support I haven't tried yet? The words command line don't show up during a search in Photo_Mechanic_4.5.3_Manual.pdf, which seems to be the latest PDF. But what the heck...I ran PM from the command line, putting a fully qualified path name on the command tail... and eureka, that works.

(* I do realize CameraBits did not write that particular code :-).