Smoother tag editing when multiple dives are selected?

Suggestions? Comments? Features you'd like to see?
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mikemike
Posts: 10
Joined: Tue Jan 05, 2016 3:26 am
Dive Computer: TDC-3

Smoother tag editing when multiple dives are selected?

Post by mikemike »

Hi,

(Thanks for maintaining MacDive; it's great!)

I'm not sure if this counts as a feature request or a bug report, but there's a bit of awkwardness in the way that tags are edited when multiple dives are selected.

Here's an example of the awkward behavior:
1. Select 20 dives, some of which have various tags attached to them.
2. Command-I to get the detail window and go to the "General" tab.
3. (Note that the "Tags" field shows the text "multiple values".)
4. Type the text "Test"into the "Tags" field and press return/move to another field.
At this point I would have expected MacDive to just append the "Test" tag to all of the selected dives, but it has also *deleted* all other tags these dives have. (I understand why this happens -- "Tags" is a text string and is being overwritten --, but it's not nearly useful as a potential alternate behavior.)

A more-convenient alternate behavior might be the following:
- Select multiple dives and then hit Command-I and go to the "Tags" field.
- The Tags field could contain bubbles for all tags that are present in ALL selected dives... plus if any selected dives have other tags then also show another bubble (perhaps in a different color?) that contains the text "multiple values". For example if all 5 selected dives have the "deco" tag but only 3 have the "trimix" tag, then I would see 2 bubbles in the "Tags" textbox: "Deco" and "Multiple Values".
- Deleting any of those bubbles removes the corresponding tag from all selected dives. Deleting the "Multiple Values" bubble removes all tags other than those individually listed (i.e., those present in all selected dives).
- Typing additional text into the field adds that text as a new tag to all selected dives (and converts it quickly to a bubble).

[Another nice feature would be the ability to drag dives from the list in the main MacDive window onto one of the tags listed in the left-hand pane of the main window with the result that that tag is appended to the dragged dives.]

This behavior would make it much easier to manage tags... which is something I have to do in order to use the "tag" feature since most of my dives are currently untagged!

Thanks!
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nick
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Joined: Sat Apr 12, 2008 8:33 am
Dive Computer: Shearwater Teric
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Re: Smoother tag editing when multiple dives are selected?

Post by nick »

We will look in to improving this feature.

For now, one hidden feature that may offer some help is if you right-click on any selected dives you can add a tag to them, without removing the existing tags. This does not provide auto-completion, it was actually just a quick hack for a good buddy who ran in to te same situation.

Apologies for the inconvenience we've caused. I will make a note that this area requires improvement.

Thanks
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