Preserving and Reusing Custom Sort Orders

[BaliDave]

Preserving and Reusing Custom Sort Orders

(Originally a forum discussion at https://www.photools.com/community/index.php?topic=4246.0)

Often at least some of us need to preserve and/or reuse a custom sort order in another category or folder. For example, often I'll want to have several different versions of a group of pictures, usually using the same ordering but different subsets of photos, e.g. a long "show", a short show (e.g. a preview), and perhaps another to put up on the web (and sometimes even more versions).    I'd like to do this without copying or renaming files, as that proliferates versions to maintain.

So I create a category of these (or put them in one folder) and sort them via custom sort as I want.  I want to save and reuse this custom sort for this category/folder.   Next I want to use the same order on only a subset of the files without having to rearrange them (maybe I first select all the files for the new category and then delete some there, or I only copy a subset).

The problem I have now is that if I create another category/folder from some or all of these files, I've lost the custom sorting that I had created.  And that's what I want to maintain.  Scripting is one way to accomplish this but it doesn't readily allow reordering.

I also might later add or delete files to either of these categories, so the custom sorts on these need to be independent (i.e. changing it for one group does NOT change the order for the other) -- so it's really a copying of the order at that time, and not a sharing of it.

Additionally it would be good to be able to name this custom sort order so it can be later modified.  This would reduce the danger of later accidentally clobbering the sorting order that was set up.

[sinus]

I do not know exactly how to implement this, but I support this feature request

+1

Because I use also a custom order and would like to use this same order later again.
At the moment I use a metadata-field for this (with a script, what does a order like 001, 002 ... and I can then later use a created sort order profile, based on this field).

But this is a bit akward, a better solution would be nice.

[Ger]

Here's my +1

I'm currently maintaining custom sort orders within (a few) categories using an attribute and script. I would welcome a native and robust IMatch solution for managing this.

In my situation, I don't have the need to maintain custom sort order over different categories.

Ger

[Frank]

+1
Currently I am using a metadata field like sinus.
Frank

[Mario]

To make this clear: You can create custom sorts for each folder and for each category. No need to use scripts, custom Attributes or whatever.

This feature request is about copying custom sort orders between folders and categories. Which can cause a quite some issues:

For example,

1) a category or folder can only hold a custom sort order for files it actually contains. So if you copy the sort order for 100 files to a category which contains only a subset (say, 50) of these files, the sort order will be reduced to these files. If you later assign other files from the folder to the category, they will not be sorted correctly, because the custom sort order does not cover them.

2) You copy a custom sort order from a category to another. The target category holds only 50 of the 100 files covered in the custom sort order, but also 50 other files. In the end, only 50 of the files are covered by the custom sort order, and the other files will be sorted how?

3) You copy a custom sort order from a category to another category, which also has a custom sort order. Would you a) replace the custom sort order in the target, b) merge the custom sort orders, c) ask the user what to do?

That's just 3 points I came up with last eventing while thinking about this. There will be more.

[BaliDave]

I'd be content with copying the custom sort order (CSO) from one category (or perhaps a folder!) to another category (not folder), and having that copy overwrite any existing CSO in the target category.  The target category's CSO would then either be:

--  identical to the CSO of the parent (with any other files not referenced in the CSO added to the end),
OR
-- only a subset, if some files weren't there (i.e. it'd be the intersection of the original CSO and the files that existed in the target at the time of the copy).

And any existing CSO in the target would have been clobbered. I think that makes the process clear and predictable.

We can leave naming CSO's for some later time if there's a real need.

ps -- I didn't find any mention in the Help doc about CSO's being specific to a folder or category.  But real good to know!