I tend to use context menus whenever possible, and my favorites are those that save me typing. When I save old books, papers, articles, etc. from websites I almost always rename them with as much info as I can include so I don’t end up with a computer full of 48372x3f2ksk,jpg and lskd776elkjh32,pdf (which somehow happens anyway, no matter how hard I try). These filenames can get really long.
I would like to be able to select parts of the filename in list view in Tropy, right-click, and choose where to copy that string of text.
Example:
Topeka State Journal (Topeka KS) 1897-09-21 Iowa rids Spirit Lake of cannibal fish (gar) and buffalo.jpg
I’d select Iowa and copy it to metadata/coverage (often this would be a longer string with town, county, etc., so would save more typing). Select 1897-09-21 and copy to metadata/date. Select Iowa rids…buffalo and copy to notes. Select Topeka State Journal and copy to metadata/publisher.
I would also want 1897, gar, and buffalo to be tags (in some of my filenames there might be 10 words/phrases that will be tags). So maybe also have Tag in the context menu (and a keyboard shortcut might be nice).
It would also be cool to be able to do all of this with words/phrases in an item’s notes. And with text in metadata fields (eg if title or description has words that need to be tags, a place name that needs to be in coverage, or a date).
(One problem I see is that if you click twice (slowly) on a filename or other field in list view (to make text selectable), you have to drag over even single words to select them, since the standard technique of double-clicking on a word to select it causes Tropy to open the item. I think that shouldn’t happen if the text is selectable.)
What metadata fields would be relevant to info in filenames would vary depending on users’ naming habits, the project’s requirements and many other things, so the choices in the context menu would have to be able to be customized by the user (and perhaps be saved as presets).