Ticking multiple thumbnails unreliable

edit: this post was changed as i had misidentified the behaviour

Rapid Photo Downloader 0.9.17 on Debian sid

Reporting a bug seems to require launchpad login which I don’t have. So I’m posting this here as a tip for others as well as a means of making @damonlynch aware.

When lots of thumbnails are selected only the active thumbnail can be reliably used to tick/untick a selection of images with my configuration. This means that when ctrl+a selecting without explicitly pre selecting one thumbnail (making it active) you can’t tick/untick the checkboxes. Additionally when shift or ctrl selecting a range of images you have to manipulate the checkbox of the last image. There is no visual indication which thumbnail is “active” so you have to remember or guess which box to tick.

I only figured this out writing another (cancelled) post about the difficulty in selecting multiple images. I thought it failed randomly and only worked a bit more reliably when shift selecting a small range. Turned out it was because I tended to click the last thumb of a shift select range (mouse already there) whereas I click an image in the middle of the range when ctrl+a selecting.

I do a lot of box ticking in rpd since I use the job code feature and tend to wait several days between downloads. Since all files are auto selected I have to first deselect all files before selecting and downloading according to job code.

Perhaps rpd can have an option not auto selecting all new files? This would save a lot of clicking for people who use job codes and wait days between downloads. Or perhaps I’m missing how to control job codes across several days of selected files? Another option would be to allow selecting/unselecting files via right click menu from the “calendar strip”.

There could be a bug with recent versions of Qt in the way the program marks / unmarks files for download. Something seems to have changed within Qt itself, which most of the time is a bug in Qt. I have not had time to follow it closely. And I will not likely have time to look at this for several months.

Regarding your other observations — are you aware there is a difference between marking files for download, and selecting them to do things like apply a job code to multiple files before download? I’m unsure from your comments if you know about this. Selecting files to do something is different from marking files.

I had not figured out the select apply job code process. Your comment prompted me to look into it. Gets around the click issue for me. I previously only used the pop up job code window, failed to realize i could use the tab!

Glad to hear it works better for you now. It has been documented here for some years: Rapid Photo Downloader: Documentation

Perhaps I need to pop up a warning in the UI that doing it the way you were formerly doing it is not the best in most situations.

Clarifying it better in the documentation might help too.