"A Bag of Random Menus" feedback

[sjk]

For higher visibility, here's a verbatim quote of my reply to the recent blog post:

Nice! Wish I had “Rename Linked File to Title” and “Show in Finder” a few months ago but I’ll still make use of them, and maybe “Duration to Hours”, in the future.

Btw, in the “Rename Linked File to Title” example the renamed file probably becomes “Star Wars- Episode III -Revenge of the Sith.mp4″ because I think the ‘:’ (colon) character is changed to a ‘-’ (hyphen). I wouldn’t mind if the Name field (under the Links tab of an entry’s Edit… window) was also renamed to the title. And (untested) it might only rename the first of multiple links for an entry because (tested) “Show in Finder” works that way. Multi-link handling entry would be ideal, if possible.

Thanks for this much so far!

[Conor]

The colon is a special character in the Mac OS system and acts like the forward slash. You can actually use forward slashes in OS X, but to be safe I simply replaced both with a hyphen. The name of the link will be updated to reflect that.

I was not sure how to handle multiple links as they can't all be renamed to the same title. So I kept it simple and pick the first linked file to work with. I added that it does it to all linked files and if there are more than one it will add an incremental number to the end of the linked file.

Download and install the plugin again as well as restart DVDpedia.

[sjk]

The colon is a special character in the Mac OS system and acts like the forward slash. You can actually use forward slashes in OS X, but to be safe I simply replaced both with a hyphen. The name of the link will be updated to reflect that.

Yup, I've known about colon vs. forward slash in OS X at least since reading about it in Wilfredo Sanchez's Usenix paper:

The Challenges of Integrating the Unix and Mac OS Environments

Which reminds me of Brian Tiemann's article:

On Unix File System's Case Sensitivity

It convinced me never to fret about case-sensitive filesystems on OS X again, but I've never seen anything as persuasive in favor of <expletive deleted > filename extensions.

What I was trying to say is that replacing colon with hyphen doesn't match this description in the blog post:

Rename Linked File to Title: Updates the name of the linked file to reflect the title. So a file called AAA-1023.mp4 linked to a DVDpedia entry Star Wars: Episode III -Revenge of the Sith will become Star Wars: Episode III -Revenge of the Sith.mp4

Both the filename and link Name in DVDpedia will "… become Star Wars- Episode III -Revenge of the Sith.mp4", its colon being replaced with hyphen.

My preference would be for colon to be retained in the link Name, only changing it to hyphen in the filename. Before Rename Linked File to Title existed I'd manually changed hyphen to colon in the link Name of numerous entries to consistently match the Title, which didn't rename any files (most with colon replaced by hyphen in their filenames).

As-is, Rename Linked File to Title conveniently/desirably semi-automates the file renaming step even if I'll still manually change hyphens to colons in a link Name afterwards.

I was not sure how to handle multiple links as they can't all be renamed to the same title. So I kept it simple and pick the first linked file to work with. I added that it does it to all linked files and if there are more than one it will add an incremental number to the end of the linked file.

Multiple linked files were renamed in my brief testing, but the link Name and URL (under the Links tab of the Edit window) didn't change for any of them.

Maybe add a space before the appended incremental number ("… of the Sith 1") so it doesn't look like it's part of the filename's last component ("… of the Sith1)?

Show in Finder opens the URLs dirname if the underlying file's been renamed/moved with Finder (et al.), which is more confusing when moved than renamed.

Btw, I'm clueless what's causing this console message when DVDpedia launches:

Code: Select all

DVDpedia[57768]: Loading two plugins with the same menu title, last one will be used: Title Case

Also happened with the original version, before installing the update. The only other instances of the plugin are in Time Machine backups.

Thanks for your feedback and support!

[Conor]

DVDpedia[57768]: Loading two plugins with the same menu title, last one will be used: Title Case

DVDpedia tries to be backwards compatible with older menu plugins in 3.x- that work in a different way and this version detects it as two plugins being loaded with the same name. The new 5.x and the 3.x version and ignores one of them and emits the warning. It's fixed in the latest beta without number change as it's so minimal.

My preference would be for colon to be retained in the link Name, only changing it to hyphen in the filename. Before Rename Linked File to Title existed I'd manually changed hyphen to colon in the link Name of numerous entries to consistently match the Title, which didn't rename any files (most with colon replaced by hyphen in their filenames).

I was being lazy and did the least amount of coding. Also why the name and URL don't update right away as there is no specific API exposed from the plugins that would allow me to tell it to update after the running the menu command. If you change entry and come back the information should then refresh to show the change. In your case updating the slash back to a colon is more complicated as you need the links tab to refresh.

I have updated the plugin to keep the colon for the link name as well as add the extra space when adding a number to the file name. Download and install as usual.

[FineWine]

I love this plug-in - thank you Conor. (especially the "Duration to Hours").

A suggestion - would it be possible to program in a "Progress Activity Bar" so we know the particular job is being done and when it has finished. If you do not like that idea how about a pop-up box stating that the particular job has been completed. Actually the more I think about it, the pop-up box would be better because if you were only doing one or two entries then the Progress Bar would appear and disappear in flash.

Anyway we are off on holidays to China, Hong Kong & Bali today for 22 days but will be keeping up with the forum on hotel WiFi via the iPad. I have to keep up with all the Apple news or I will suffer withdrawal symptoms.

Cheers

[sjk]

DVDpedia tries to be backwards compatible with older menu plugins in 3.x- that work in a different way and this version detects it as two plugins being loaded with the same name. The new 5.x and the 3.x version and ignores one of them and emits the warning. It's fixed in the latest beta without number change as it's so minimal.

There was no TitleCase.plugin in the non-beta so I'm confused, but thanks. Message is gone after installing the beta and deleting the redundant ~/Library/Application\ Support/DVDpedia/Plug-ins/TitleCase.plugin since it's now in the app bundle Plug-ins folder.

Also why the name and URL don't update right away as there is no specific API exposed from the plugins that would allow me to tell it to update after the running the menu command. If you change entry and come back the information should then refresh to show the change. In your case updating the slash back to a colon is more complicated as you need the links tab to refresh.

I did entry switching to trigger some plugin post-usage refreshes during testing but apparently hadn't refreshed the Links tab even though I'm sure I restarted DVDpedia a few times with the intention of refreshing.

I have updated the plugin to keep the colon for the link name as well as add the extra space when adding a number to the file name.

Great - thanks.

I do some retesting later.

Download and install as usual.

That installed the redundant relative-to-beta copy mentioned above, which this alerted me to:

Code: Select all

Jul 30 14:31:04 aura.local DVDpedia[70679]: objc[70679]: Class titlecase is implemented in both /Applications/DVDpedia Beta.app/Contents/Plug-ins/TitleCase.plugin/Contents/MacOS/TitleCase and /Users/sjk/Library/Application Support/DVDpedia/Plug-ins/TitleCase.plugin/Contents/MacOS/TitleCase. One of the two will be used. Which one is undefined.
Jul 30 14:31:04 aura.local DVDpedia[70679]: Loading two plugins with the same menu title, last one will be used: Title Case

[Conor]

Thank you for all the feedback.

I have removed the plugin from the beta 49, so that users can install it directly into their application folder and avoid any warnings about both plugins being installed.

@FineWine I'll consider a alert, but most of the commands should be instantaneous, even for a large selection. Enjoy Bali, if you get the time pop over to the small island of Nusa Lembongan. The island is worth exploring (rent a scooter), including the bridge connecting to the more remote and rural eastern island. Book a table at "Scallywags" on the south side, perfect for sunset.

Also the plugin is now updated (including the source code for programmers) with a new command that creates covers from the linked files, for home movies and other files that have no cover art a la EyeTV, XBMC and Plex style.

[sjk]

I have removed the plugin from the beta 49, so that users can install it directly into their application folder and avoid any warnings about both plugins being installed.

That works. Will there be notifications if this plug-in is updated again since those updates won't be included with app updates? It's not on the Extras page (yet). Adding "last modified" datestamps to those items would make it easier to determine if they're newer than a local copy.

Enjoy Bali, …

I certainly did during the Y2K millennial anniversary.

[Conor]

I would like to update the entire plugin system to allow for automatic updates for those already installed as well as more collaborative features by using GitHub for the code. As well as change my build system to allow for automatic date information to be included. But it requires a complicated overhaul so it's been dragging on my to do list and will likely be done with the whole web page update that is way overdue as well. However, you're right that it's become useful enough that I should give it its own extras page and not just a forum and blog post.

[Nora]

Very own Extras page for the multifunctional plug-in is up.

[sjk]

Thanks for the info and new page.