OK, I've done some more thinking about this. These five features may avoid/defer a lot of the tag editing suggestions I've seen.
A). Copy field under mouse cursor to clip board.
This would also get a single path name.
B). Copy group to clipboard.
Every file path in the candidate duplicate group would go to the clip board in two formats.
- B1). Text string of path names, suitable for pasting into a (pseudo) common dialog open box file name field.
I fire up my favorite tagging program, have it do a "select files", and then paste the file path names into the dialog. Presto, all the tags of all the files are available for me to play with.
-- This may imply semi-colons, as well as spaces, separating the names?
-- This also implies some sort of limited display refresh function in Similarity to pick up the tag values just changed in the tagging program, which is function E) below.
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- B2) Files paths to clipboard in reference format similar to a shell "copy" operation. In theory, a "paste" operation in Windows Explorer would then copy the files. And a tagger program could receive these files through a (tagger implemented) paste files function.
C) Open tagger for group.
The tagging program is defined in the options panel.
- C1) Just launch the program with the file path names as the parameter.
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- C2) Launch the program passing the files as if they had been dropped on the program icon, or the program launched by a shell extension.
Note that this is a much more sophisticated method and difficult method, but the only way to pass lots and lots of files as parameters. But for a launch by Similarity, there won't be enough to require this method and C1) will probably work great.
(For an example of a shell extension for tagging, install MP3Tag and you can have a Window Explorer right click shell extension "MP3TAG". Select the files, right click on one of them, and launch MP3TAG from the menu.)
D) Drag and drop. Yes, it's a pain in the arse to get working, but it coordinates with C2).
- Grab (mouse click on) some area next to a logical box containing the candidate group information. Drop the file names on the target window, probably a tagging program.
-- This implies designating target areas to click on. Perhaps clicking on a file name will drag just that name, and clicking in any other column will drag all file names in the group.
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- Drop the files on an open window (i.e. the running tagger program).
Using MP3Tag as an example, the drop operation would replace/add to the current files list. One would start a tag cleanup in Similarity by C) -- launch tagger with bunch of files. The next group of files would be dropped on the open MP3Tag window, thus saving the overhead of closing it (as well as allowing multiple groups to be added to the tagging operation).
E) Refresh (re-read those being displayed) tags in group.
As a first cut, A), B1), C1), and E) might be doable in the foreseeable future?
