Exported Spectrum overwrites existing file.

[waxcylinder]

BUMP: @Steve/ED is this a Feature Request or development Work In Progress?

Peter

[Edgar]

deferred to Steve…

[steve]

If agreement can be reached by QA about "how" to implement it, then it will be a work in progress, but until such time it is a feature request.
My vote is for: "Export Spectrum overwrites existing file" and prompts the user if the file already exists (like when exporting audio).

[Robert J. H.]

I share Steve's opinion, it's the simplest solution and a expected behaviour.

[waxcylinder]

If agreement can be reached by QA about "how" to implement it, then it will be a work in progress, but until such time it is a feature request.

Accordingly it makes no sense to transfer this to Wiki>PFR, nor to move it to the FR archive-discussion section of the forum (as this is still potentially a live discussion).

So I will just let it bump along on here until if and when we get agreement/resolution.

Peter.

[steve]

I was thinking that it would be nice if selecting an existing file to export the spectrum to could pop up a simple message box (wxMessageBox) that would say something like:

A file named "/path/spectrum.txt" already exists.
[Overwrite] [Append] [Cancel]

Unfortunately (unless Edgar knows better) there seems to be no way with wxWidgets to "simply" change the default button text
The available buttons are YES, NO, OK, CANCEL.

Considering that this is most probably a feature that few people use at all, and those people that have commented in this topic only want the ability to overwrite and perhaps be reminded if they are overwriting a file, it seems to me to be OTT to design and build a full-blown custom dialogue for something so trivial.

It would be very ugly to design the message box:

"Click "YES" to Overwrite,
click "NO" to Append,
or "Cancel" to select a new file name"

So we could have a simple:

A file named "/path/spectrum.txt" already exists.
Overwrite? [YES] [NO]

and lose the "Append" option (but then we have the "R" word),

or

A file named "/path/spectrum.txt" already exists.
Append? [YES] [NO]

but then we loose the very feature that this feature request is about,

or

we have a preference setting (and triggering the "preference creep phobia").

[steve]

preference.png (66.48 KiB) Viewed 2000 times

replace.png (12.14 KiB) Viewed 2000 times

append.png (11.96 KiB) Viewed 2000 times

[Edgar]

Unfortunately (unless Edgar knows better) there seems to be no way with wxWidgets to "simply" change the default button text

I do not think that there is any way to change these labels; one would need to create a custom dialog. We already have the ErrorDialog (see src/widgets/Error Dialog.cpp) which could probably be extended to do this job.

If we MUST use a Yes/No dialog which will pop up every time <shudder> then I suppose we need some wording vaguely like:
"Normally Audacity will overwrite the existing data. To keep the existing data you may append the new data to the old data. Do you wish to append?"
Yes _|_ No _|_ Cancel

[steve]

If we MUST use a Yes/No dialog which will pop up every time <shudder>

<shudder>
I agree, not nice.

If we have a "don't show this again", I don't think that we can avoid having a preference setting.

[steve]

Here's the patch to go with the screenshots.

OverwriteSpectrumExport-02.patch

(6.43 KiB) Downloaded 164 times