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List:       amarok-bugs-dist
Subject:    [amarok] [Bug 329298] New: Use Context View for "Edit Track Details" dialog
From:       Jakob Petsovits <jpetso () gmx ! at>
Date:       2013-12-28 5:08:42
Message-ID: bug-329298-71684 () http ! bugs ! kde ! org/
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https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=329298

            Bug ID: 329298
           Summary: Use Context View for "Edit Track Details" dialog
    Classification: Unclassified
           Product: amarok
           Version: unspecified
          Platform: unspecified
                OS: Linux
            Status: UNCONFIRMED
          Severity: normal
          Priority: NOR
         Component: Metadata Editing and Reading
          Assignee: amarok-bugs-dist@kde.org
          Reporter: jpetso@gmx.at
                CC: 123kash@gmail.com

Having a separate dialog pop up to check and edit metadata just about works for
a single file but gets progressively cumbersome with more files involved. There
are a few pain points here:

* While the "Edit Track Details" dialog is not a modal dialog (which in itself
is a good thing as you can still control playback and other stuff), it makes
Alt-Tab switching a pain. This is especially important since editing tags often
involves copying and pasting from a browser window, where a situation with two
task bar items but three windows becomes a big mental overhead and an annoyance
when you (often) hit the wrong window.

* If I want to select a different set of songs, I have to close and re-open the
dialog (tree clicks alone for getting back into the dialog, not including
clicks for selecting different songs). There is room for improvement here.

* To make up for inefficient re-selection of tracks, the dialog has two modes,
one for jumping through the selected tracks one by one, and the other for
editing all of them at the same time. Both suffer from a lack of context: For
the multi-file editing mode, I have to keep the list of edited files in my head
or face the threat of making edits to the wrong files; for the single-file
editing mode, the edited file is delightfully dissimilar to both the currently
playing track and the currently selected ones (assuming I'm editing several). I
have to make that connection in my head without Amarok helping me to more
context. This is especially annoying when either tags or filename are out of
whack, which happens to be a main use case as to why you would like to open the
dialog in the first place.

* The dialog duplicates much of the information that is already displayed in
the context view.

What made the Amarok 1.x metadata editing great was that all the context from
the playlist could be immediately and efficiently reused (both mentally and
interaction-wise) for its in-place editing. Given Amarok 2's playlist layout,
in-place editing there obviously doesn't make much sense anymore. However, I
think putting the main pieces of the "Edit Track Dialog" inside the context
view would be similarly capable and efficient, and make all of the above pain
points disappear while the drawbacks are limited.

The main two drawbacks I can think of are:

* Currently, the context view always displays information purely about the
current track. As metadata editing ought to correspond with selected tracks,
there is a conceptual conflict here. This could either be ignored (I think the
usefulness of not having a separate dialog greatly outweighs the inconsistency,
and it's only for editing), worked around (e.g. by marking both the edit "view"
and the selected files with a color, say, yellow, for the time that editing is
active/possible), or the interaction concept could be changed to remove the
selection on a "play" double click or Skype-style unselection, so that when
users can consciously set the selection to explore the context for tracks that
are not currently playing. Maybe you've got a wholly different idea as well,
let me know.

* If editing is tied to the playlist selection, it won't be possible (or at
least, won't make sense interaction-wise) to edit files that are not in the
playlist but just in the collection. I don't think that will annoy many people
as it's easy to drag files over to the playlist. Alternatively, in the vein of
the above interaction concept change idea, the selection could apply to either
the playlist or the collection browser but not both simultaneously, in which
case an "Edit Track Details" view in the context view would make sense.

Let me know what you think!

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