Real Time Rename Preview (RTRP)

[jacky]

jacky, aren't there some options in various products you use that have labels that mean nothing to you until you get to know the product?

Sure, but they usually still mean something that makes sense once you know what it relates too.

But yeah it's the same here in fact, and "Preview All" will do it. I guess I was too obsessed that it didn't relate, in its label, only to the "automatic" rename modes.

@graham: I think "Preview All" is better, as "Always Preview" could imply that other renaming modes couldn't be done without preview, which they can.

[mwb1100]

I know I'm getting into this discussion kind of late, but I lean towards Jacky's original idea of the pattern specification and the preview (optionally) being in one dialog. Going back & forth between the two does not 'flow' well for me mentally.

What about using an 'expanding' dialog box for the batch rename. When it first comes up it looks very similar to how it does now, excpet that the preview button has ">>>" on it instead of "..."

When you click on the "Preview >>>" button you get Jacky's dialog, but with the preview button changed to "<<< Preview" to allow a user to shrink the dialog back to its compact original self.

One additional thing that this completely fixes is any confusion about what cancel does or should do - it's one dialog, so "cancel" cancels it, whether you do it with the cancel button, the red 'X", or the escape key.

Here's some pointer to general discussion and examples of expanding dialogs:

http://www.fast-consulting.com/gdhb_dialogex.htm
http://www.codeguru.com/cpp/w-d/dislog/ ... php/c2027/

Here are some crappy proof of concepts:

http://www.interslice.org/images/basic.batch.rename.jpg
http://www.interslice.org/images/expand ... rename.jpg