Sorting of filenames no longer happening in GUI

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Hemloc
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Sorting of filenames no longer happening in GUI

Post by Hemloc »

Hi there,

In version 4.6.1 the GUI would automatically sort filenames in the left panel, making checking of names matching from the right panel much easier. This feature has disappeared from 4.7 onwards. Is there anyway to get this back?

Thanks
Andrew
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rednoah
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Re: Sorting of filenames no longer happening in GUI

Post by rednoah »

Dropped folders/files are listed alphabetically. This has not been changed.
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Hemloc
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Re: Sorting of filenames no longer happening in GUI

Post by Hemloc »

Sorry, I should have attached a screenshot : http://imgur.com/a/GBl9i

If I highlight a list, then select a file in the middle of this list and drag it to the GUI, in 4.6.1 it will sort this list, in 4.7.5/7 it does not. For the screenshot I highlighted all the files for "Welcome to Paradox", then selected S01E07 and dragged this to the GUI, as you can see, the list is not sorted.
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rednoah
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Re: Sorting of filenames no longer happening in GUI

Post by rednoah »

If you drop in a selection of files, then FileBot will respect the original order whatever that may be. So you can sort files in Windows Explorer however you want first (name, date, type, etc) and then drag-n-drop all the files into FileBot. CTRL+A should make sure that all files are selected in the current display order.

If you drop in a folder, then FileBot will select all files in that folder in alphabetical order.

@see http://stackoverflow.com/a/38508562/1514467
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Hemloc
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Re: Sorting of filenames no longer happening in GUI

Post by Hemloc »

Your link indicates exactly what is happening in the current version of FileBot, however as I have indicated, this is not what happens in 4.6.1. I know you said you have changed nothing, but something is definitely different because previously FileBot would sort the list, but now it does not. Is there anyway to re-enable this feature?
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rednoah
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Re: Sorting of filenames no longer happening in GUI

Post by rednoah »

I guess behaviour has changed in this regard then. If you drop in a custom selection of files then FileBot will not enforce a specific sort order. If it was different in the past, then that was a bug which has since been fixed. Unfortunately, there is no option to enable this "feature".

I'm fairly sure Windows Explorer makes it possible for you to select and drag files in a way that preserves the order.
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Hemloc
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Re: Sorting of filenames no longer happening in GUI

Post by Hemloc »

Well... I was hoping there was a "default sort" type feature, but if not, ah well. then yes, I will have to be careful how I drag and drop the files from windows. Thanks for the info.
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rednoah
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Re: Sorting of filenames no longer happening in GUI

Post by rednoah »

The original file selection order is preserved because the user defined order may be important when matching files manually. There's a few use cases that would break if FileBot was to enforce sort order.

If you drop files into Filter, and then send them on to Rename, then they'll be in FileBot sort order. Basically, the order is up to the program that creates the file selection, but I have to agree that Explorer is a bit strange in this regard.
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voidpointer
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Re: Sorting of filenames no longer happening in GUI

Post by voidpointer »

I wanted to bump this thread instead of opening another, because I'm still seeing this issue. Sorting in Windows Explorer prior to dragging the files does not make a difference. Here's the original order of the files in Windows Explorer, plus the selection of files that I will drag & drop:

Image

And after I drag/drop into Filebot:

Image

At the moment I see no way to control the ordering. Having a proper, alphabetically sorted list prior to matching will make shifting matches up & down much easier to do. Is there a way to fix this?

EDIT: If I drag & drop the parent directory ("Season 1" in this case), then I do get proper alphabetical sort in Filebot. I expect a selected list of files to also be sorted the same way.
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rednoah
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Re: Sorting of filenames no longer happening in GUI

Post by rednoah »

What happens if you select all files via CTRL+A in Windows Explorer and then drag all files from Windows Explorer into FileBot? Make sure that you click on and drag from Episode 00 (and not from the middle of the selection, such as Episode 04) when dragging files from Windows Explorer.

:idea: FileBot respects the original order of the file list as passed in by Windows Explorer.
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voidpointer
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Re: Sorting of filenames no longer happening in GUI

Post by voidpointer »

Yes clicking and dragging from the first item works. I've developed on Windows for 15 years and I didn't even know about this. In my humble opinion (and with all due respect), I feel like the way this is implemented in Filebot is unnecessarily complicated. I do not see most people understanding the intricacies of this drag & drop behavior, nor do I see the real benefits of controlling sort order to such a degree *prior* to dragging items into Filebot. Personally I feel like Filebot should always alphabetically sort items when dragging them in, regardless of the order of the items from Windows shell. From the Filebot UI, users can drag & drop items out of alphabetical order how they please. You could even expand the UI of Filebot to add various improvements to make ordering items simpler.

I realize I'm seeing things from my own specific needs and usage of Filebot, but my gut feel is that this could be greatly simplified with some default sorting behaviors.

Thanks for receiving my feedback!
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rednoah
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Re: Sorting of filenames no longer happening in GUI

Post by rednoah »

FileBot could easily enforce an alphanumeric sort order, just like it does for folders, and it did so in the past, but then it'll be impossible to sort files in Windows (e.g. by Date Taken, Image Resolution, File Size, etc) and drop them into FileBot in that order.

There's also other tools that can drag-n-drop files, and do so in a certain order, the FileBot Filter Tool itself being one, and enforcing a sort order would break various interesting use cases there.

I've never seen any tools have options for how to deal with the order of files being dropped in, so I'm not inclined to add an option (that nobody would use or understand). Though I'd be fine with adding a -Dsystem=property option.

If this comes up as an issue more often, I might enforce a sort order. But for now, I'll leave it as it is, and hope that some Windows update hopefully finally fixes their stupid selection behaviour.


EDIT:

Support for a new net.filebot.dnd.sort system property has been added, so you'll be able to force the DnD behavior you want by adding this option to your FILEBOT_OPTS environment variable:

Code: Select all

-Dnet.filebot.dnd.sort=true
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