[Wishlist] Editing multiple files, and open with

I’ve been using EagleFiler for a couple weeks now, and so far there have only been a couple minor points that I keep twigging to. That’s really terrific for such a new product!

  1. I frequently import a series of documents at once, and then need to go back and make the same changes to all of them (for instance, correcting the “From” field, or assigning a common tag to the bunch). Being able to select multiple files, and then edit common fields through the inspector would be a huge time-saver. The way iTunes handles multiple file edits would be ideal.

[Edit: Of course I find this thread: after posting. Personally, I would still prefer to do a multiple file edit within EF. Today, for instance, I imported 23 PDFs all from the same source. Having to go in and individually add the same text string to 23 “From” fields in a row is not fun :wink: Since I’m in the inspector all ready, that feels like a natural time to set a preliminary tag or two. So again, I’m duplicating a process 23 times in a row.]

  1. Caveat: this may in fact be something which I can configure within OS X, and not a feature to be implemented within EF. When I Control-Click on a PDF, it would be helpful to have EF appear in the list of Applications I can open that PDF with. Having to go in to “Other…” and the select EF out of the list of all applications takes far more clicks (and more time) then the process should. In fact, this workflow detail, more than anything, is why I still have Yojimbo on my system.

  2. This is more of a “nice to have” than “irks me everytime I use it”. I have a number of different EF libraries which I use on a daily basis, and I invariably forget to open one of them before I attempt to use it. If there were an option to have EF open with a set of libraries automatically loaded in the Drop Pad, that would be fantastic.

Bulk editing of the text fields is on my to-do list. As noted in the linked post, you can use the Tags inspector to edit the tags of a multiple selection. I’d like to make this also work with the tags field in the Info inspector, but I haven’t decided on the proper way to do this yet.

I don’t really understand what you’re trying to do. When you ask EagleFiler to open a PDF (or any non-library document), it will try to import the file, not view it. If you want to view the PDF inside EagleFiler, you’ll need to open a library and browse or search for it from within EagleFiler. Are you trying to make it import PDF files when you double-click them?

If you click the Change All button, you should only have to do that once.

This will be addressed in the next release.

Thank you for the responses! I’m very much looking forward to the next release =D

I don’t really understand what you’re trying to do. When you ask EagleFiler to open a PDF (or any non-library document), it will try to import the file, not view it. If you want to view the PDF inside EagleFiler, you’ll need to open a library and browse or search for it from within EagleFiler. Are you trying to make it import PDF files when you double-click them?

I did a poor job of describing that one; sorry about that!

I’m trying to cut down on the number of steps required to import a (for instance) PDF into EF. Dragging a file into EF does not mesh well with how I interact with my files. Instead, I’m looking for a comfortable and speedy way to click on a file and choose to import it into EF. I do not want EF to be the default option, so I am not talking about double-clicking on it.

I use the phrase “Open with” rather than import, because that’s OS X’s terminology for the action I’m taking.

When you Control-Click on a file, one of the options which appears in the context menu is labelled “Open With ->”. The menu which opens up off of this displays a list of applications which OS X knows can handle the mime type of the file – the “Recommended Applications”. (Short response: I would like to see EagleFinder appear in this list.)

If you want to open the selected file with an application which is NOT in that list, you can select the very bottom option, “Other…” which then opens “Choose Application” window (in Finder; other Applications popup a standard “Open” dialogue window) that’s rooted in your Application folder. I.e., you can browse your Application folder to find the program you want to use.

Currently, if I want to import a PDF (or other EF-friendly filetypes) into EF, I have to do the following

Control-Click >> Open With >> Other >> EagleFiler >> Open

Instead, I’d like to have EagleFiler appear in the Recommended Applications list. Which would reduce those steps to

Control-Click >> Open With >> EagleFiler

This would actually cut down the number of clicks involved by two (not to mention elimate the need to scroll through my Application list), and cut down the time involved by more than half; finding and selecting EagleFinder from my Applications directory is the most labour intensive part of this process.

I presume this is something that the application itself can do, because Yojimbo and Journaler (two other programs I have which work with PDFs) were recognized as Recommended Applications for PDFs as soon as I installed them, without my having to do anything.

Now, you suggest:

If you click the Change All button, you should only have to do that once.

…but I’m not sure where this “Change All” button is. When I’m in the “Choose Application” dialogue, there is a checkbox to make my selection the default option (“Always Open With”), but this is not what I want to do. Am I missing something? Or are we talking about different things?

Aha. In retrospect, your request was clear and I misread it, thinking you were referring to the Get Info window. I will make some changes so that EagleFiler appears in that menu.

Added in EagleFiler 1.1.

EagleFiler 1.3 added the Batch Change window, which can help with this.