Like Guapo, I would really love to have drag and drop of songs working in MM.
So I’ll add some more info around this….
As an FYI, Bug
https://www.ventismedia.com/mantis/view.php?id=18994 is tracking that Shift + Drag is not moving the songs as expected along with some other cases where drag and drop fails.
In the bug, Rusty speculated that the current behavior might be a result of it being unclear how to handle such operations when the destination is something other than a playlist and posed some questions.
e.g. what should happen if the user drags (or cuts and paste) a track from a playlist to:
a) Genre node - user would probably expect the Genre to be added, but no change to the playlist
b) A location node - user would probably expect the track to be moved, but no change to the playlist
Since I don’t have access to updating the bug, I have added some thoughts about this here:
The typical way windows and apps handle this is that Dragging + ShiftKey means move. Some apps add Dragging + CtrlKey means copy.
When dragging and dropping between playlists, things are straight forward as to whether to move or copy the song between playlists.
In Rusty’s example where the destination node is not a playlist, but something like a genre node, MM could use whether the Ctrl key is pressed to indicate whether to copy the genre from the genre node destination onto the song. If the Ctrl is NOT pressed, then the genre of the song would be replaced with the genre from the destination node, just as it is today.
I’ve seen debates/complaints about what the right behavior should be when dragging a song on to the genre node. i.e. should the genre of the song get replaced with the genre node? This is a problem for users who have multiple genres on a song. Or should the genre of the song get wiped out and replaced with the genre of the destination node which is a nice convenient way to update songs with a single genre?
The beauty of adding the Ctrl and Shift key to drag operations is that you can add the new functionality of adding the genre from the destination node onto a song and that nothing changes for users used to the current behavior of the song getting its genre replaced.
To summarize:
Adding Shift + Drag always means moving the song from the source.
Adding Ctrl + Drag means do a “copy” instead of a “replace”. i.e. if destination is a node like genre, you add/copy the genre to the song, instead of replacing the songs genre with the genre destination.
1) Drag from playlist to genre node: Replace song genre with node genre, song stays in playlist.
Drag from playlist1 to playlist2: Song gets copied from playlist1 to playlist2
2) Shift Drag from playlist to genre node: Replace song genre with node genre, move song from playlist
Shift Drag from playlist1 to playlist2: Move song from playlist1 to playlist2
3) Ctrl Drag from playlist to genre node: Add genre from genre node to the song's genre, song stays in playlist.
Ctrl Drag from playlist1 to playlist2: Song gets copied from playlist1 to playlist2 like option 1
4) Ctrl+Shift Drag from playlist to genre node: Add genre from genre node to song's genre, move song from playlist
Ctrl+Shift Drag from playlist1 to playlist2: No operation, with a message that either Ctrl (copy) or Shift (move) not both keys should be used for playlist to playlist drag and drop
Like Guapo, I would really love to have drag and drop of songs working in MM.
So I’ll add some more info around this….
As an FYI, Bug https://www.ventismedia.com/mantis/view.php?id=18994 is tracking that Shift + Drag is not moving the songs as expected along with some other cases where drag and drop fails.
In the bug, Rusty speculated that the current behavior might be a result of it being unclear how to handle such operations when the destination is something other than a playlist and posed some questions.
e.g. what should happen if the user drags (or cuts and paste) a track from a playlist to:
a) Genre node - user would probably expect the Genre to be added, but no change to the playlist
b) A location node - user would probably expect the track to be moved, but no change to the playlist
Since I don’t have access to updating the bug, I have added some thoughts about this here:
The typical way windows and apps handle this is that Dragging + ShiftKey means move. Some apps add Dragging + CtrlKey means copy.
When dragging and dropping between playlists, things are straight forward as to whether to move or copy the song between playlists.
In Rusty’s example where the destination node is not a playlist, but something like a genre node, MM could use whether the Ctrl key is pressed to indicate whether to copy the genre from the genre node destination onto the song. If the Ctrl is NOT pressed, then the genre of the song would be replaced with the genre from the destination node, just as it is today.
I’ve seen debates/complaints about what the right behavior should be when dragging a song on to the genre node. i.e. should the genre of the song get replaced with the genre node? This is a problem for users who have multiple genres on a song. Or should the genre of the song get wiped out and replaced with the genre of the destination node which is a nice convenient way to update songs with a single genre?
The beauty of adding the Ctrl and Shift key to drag operations is that you can add the new functionality of adding the genre from the destination node onto a song and that nothing changes for users used to the current behavior of the song getting its genre replaced.
To summarize:
Adding Shift + Drag always means moving the song from the source.
Adding Ctrl + Drag means do a “copy” instead of a “replace”. i.e. if destination is a node like genre, you add/copy the genre to the song, instead of replacing the songs genre with the genre destination.
1) Drag from playlist to genre node: Replace song genre with node genre, song stays in playlist.
Drag from playlist1 to playlist2: Song gets copied from playlist1 to playlist2
2) Shift Drag from playlist to genre node: Replace song genre with node genre, move song from playlist
Shift Drag from playlist1 to playlist2: Move song from playlist1 to playlist2
3) Ctrl Drag from playlist to genre node: Add genre from genre node to the song's genre, song stays in playlist.
Ctrl Drag from playlist1 to playlist2: Song gets copied from playlist1 to playlist2 like option 1
4) Ctrl+Shift Drag from playlist to genre node: Add genre from genre node to song's genre, move song from playlist
Ctrl+Shift Drag from playlist1 to playlist2: No operation, with a message that either Ctrl (copy) or Shift (move) not both keys should be used for playlist to playlist drag and drop