Magic Album Beta Test

[Goblin Hero]

Beta test is ended, TY!
Currently I'm implementing a secondary inventory feature. I won't release it as an official update until I'm sure it is ready and stable.
But if you want to play with the beta - you're welcome. Just unpack and copy the "Magic Album Beta.exe" to the MA folder.
Bug reports are highly appreciated (post the bugs here, not in the bug tracker).

[Goblin Hero]

First beta is ready. Press View->Panes->Secondary Inventory. Known problems:
1. Filter sync is not working.
2. You can only add cards to the secondary inventory using drag-and-drop.
I have a question. What controls do we need to deal with the second inventory?
First, we should have buttons to add the cards from the database to the secondary inventory. Should I add another set of buttons or shift+click on the current buttons will be enough? Hot keys will be shift+f5, shift+f6.
Second, we need buttons to interact between inventories. Copy card buttons? Move card buttons? I'm open to your ideas.

[LordHelmchen]

For "add from database", maybe have a switch next to the buttons to choose which inventory all buttons (add from database, increase/decrease number) apply to. This gives comfortable access to all functions without doubling the amount of buttons. I'd vote for "move card" buttons over copy. Copy is almost as easily achieved via quicksearch and adding from database, but moving between inventories is what usually happens with the real cards. Having it as an atomic operation minimizes potential for mistakes.

edit: just realized that database and inventory have their own, differing set of buttons. Thus my idea is not applicable to nor needed for add/subtract. While still valid for add regular, add foil and add to buylist, the number of buttons in the database pane is less than in inventory panes, so adding a seconss set of those three buttons should be fine.

[Goblin Hero]

Ok, new beta is uploaded to the first post.
Filter sync is working now. Added buttons and hotkeys to add cards to the secondary inventory. Known problems: drag-n-drop between inventories does not work.

[Goblin Hero]

6 downloads and not a single bug report?
Another beta is ready. Bug fixes and drag-n-drop improvements. Known problems: NONE (unless you find something).

[Nexensis]

Hey GH, I've downloaded it and used it briefly, it looks good. Unfortunately it's nearing the end of the school semester and I'm pretty busy with assignments and exams, so I can't give it a thorough testing yet.

One thing I've noticed is that when dragging and dropping an item that is already in the target inventory, the Notes fields are appended, which is good behaviour. However, it would be nice to have a comma and/or a space between the two so that you get something like "first note, second note" instead of "first notesecond note".


Edit:
Also, perhaps a check could be implemented to see if the two Notes fields are identical, in which case they wouldn't be appended at all.

[Goblin Hero]

I've added a separator for merging the Notes. I don't think it's good to check if the two Notes fields are identical. Example: I have note "One copy signed by artist" in both inventories. If I don't append the identical notes the info that TWO cards are signed may be lost.
Another beta is ready! Added buttons for copy/move between inventories and implemented a first version of inventory comparison!
Known problems: "Have" field in the deck editor shows the sum of both the inventories. Need an option or something. Any ideas?

[LordHelmchen]

I've added a separator for merging the Notes. I don't think it's good to check if the two Notes fields are identical. Example: I have note "One copy signed by artist" in both inventories. If I don't append the identical notes the info that TWO cards are signed may be lost.

I definitely agree. I use the comment field to note language or promo-ness for cards that are not (yet) in the database, and merging should definitely not discard any information. Having to manually delete redundant information is the lesser of the two evils.

Another beta is ready! Added buttons for copy/move between inventories and implemented a first version of inventory comparison!

Great! Move solves one of the last previously unimplemented use-cases.
EDIT: When source inventory is locked, copy button works as expected (makes copy). Move button is also good (prints warning about locked inventory and does nothing). Drag'n'drop prints lock warning but still creates copy in the target inventoy. After thinking abou tit for a while, I agree this is probably correct behaviour, but it seems unintuitive that drag'n'drop is different from move. /EDIT
Btw: previous beta bug: drag'n'dropped from locked inventory into empty secondary. second inventory received an empty row (as opposed to no rows). when cliking on the empty row, an error dialog popped up: "Encountered an improper argument. (OK)". clicking OK makes the same error pop up again (ad infinitum). Had to kill MA via Taskmanager. Will try again in new beta and report.
EDIT: No Error, drag'n'drop does copy instead of move if used from locked inventory (as noted above). /EDIT

Known problems: "Have" field in the deck editor shows the sum of both the inventories. Need an option or something. Any ideas?

Without new UI elements, this sum or only counting the primary inventory would probably the most intuitive. For UI, I would consider this a property of the deck pane, so either place buttons/checkboxes there, or (saving screen real estate), place it in (a submenu of) the "Deck" dropdown menu to choose "Have colum counts": "primary" / "secondary" / "both inventories".

EDIT: (RFE) I would like to have the option to move a single card instead of all cards in a row. To select between moving regular and foil, this would probably need two additional buttons (use the icon for "increase (foil) quantity" with an arrow instead of the "+", perhaps?).

EDIT2: (BUG) When target inventory is locked, drag'n'drop correctly refuses to do anything. Copy and move buttons, in contrast, work and modify the locked inventory!

[Goblin Hero]

Another beta is ready:
1. Correct behavior then inventories are locked. FYI: drag-n-drop cursor is different for copy and move operations (holding CTRL changes the operation if possible).
2. You can choose inventory for the deck "Have" field using the main menu (Deck->Have column).
3. Row synchronization if inventory comparison is activated.
Known problems: NONE.

EDIT: (RFE) I would like to have the option to move a single card instead of all cards in a row.

Good idea, but what to do with the other fields in this mode? Just change the qty and ignore the rest?
ALL: What do you think about the inventory comparison mode? Any ideas how to improve it?

[LordHelmchen]

EDIT: (RFE) I would like to have the option to move a single card instead of all cards in a row.

Good idea, but what to do with the other fields in this mode? Just change the qty and ignore the rest?

As a quick first implementation, that would already be very useful.
If you want it more complicated, I think that as long as source quantity is greater than zero after moving, this behaviour would still be reasonable. Once quantity(reg+foil+buy) reaches zero, I would copy the other user fields to target inventory and remove the row from the source. This might still not be optimal in all cases, but at least no information is lost (or attached to an otherwise zero-card-row)...

EDIT: (RFE)

ALL: What do you think about the inventory comparison mode? Any ideas how to improve it?

I just now realized two things that would be useful: sorting and filtering by difference.

EDIT2: (BUG) I think filters are currently applied to inventory and database at the same time, independent of whether you use the database or inventory pane's icon.

[Goblin Hero]

Another beta is ready. Added buttons to move Reg/Foils between inventories.
Known issues: comparison mode in "Show unique mode" should work differently and use only the summary quantity.

I think filters are currently applied to inventory and database at the same time, independent of whether you use the database or inventory pane's icon.

Uncheck "Sync Filters" button

[LordHelmchen]

Uncheck "Sync Filters" button

It's a toggle. I thought it was a one-time action.

EDIT: (RFE) Wanting to put the new "move single" function (thanks for adding it) to good use led me to a probably very niche filter request:
I want to clean out my commons box, and could very much need a filter for "inventory fields" - unique cards quantity (=all languages and sets, regular +foil) greater than 4 to throw out (or rather seperate into a "give this away"-inventory) commons that I have more than one playset of. The filter needs to be applied even when the list is in detailed mode, of course, so I can decide which versions are to be kept.

[charmer]

I played with it a little and though I've haven't found any broken functionality in the new pane (which is mostly reused code I think), here are my notes:

Clicking View->Pane->Secondary Inventory is an awfully inconvenient way to advertise the feature, let alone to access it. There should be a shortcut in the Invetory menu in the form of the "Open a sec. inventory" option, which would be greyed out if the new pane is already open.

When I first opened the new pane, it simply overlayed the whole screen and I had to struggle for a while trying to rearrange all the panes so that I could actually see the main DB and the two inventories at the same time. I'll try again on a big monitor but this was frustrating to do on a small laptop screen.

Solutions:
1)add a default two-inventory layout (with a key shortcut) that would be activated when you open the second inventory. I'd imagine it as follows:

* Main DB pane on the left, covering around 30% width, stretching the whole height of the MA window.
* Inventory panes to the right, with the primary inv. on top, each stretching the remaining width and half of the height on the window.
* No other panes (default for small screens) - another advanced layout could have additional panes on the far right.

2)Implement a way to easily cycle through open panes in MA in case they overlap. Just as Alt+Tab is used in the system, Shift+Tab could be used inside the application.

Tooltips for the new buttons say "...another inventory". If there are no plans to have even more than 2 inventories open, it should say "the other inventory"

Also, some default shortcuts for the new buttons would be nice.

On a related note, when fiddling with the panes, I've also tried to customize the number of columns displayed. There are 31 columns now and it is quite tiresome to select 10 of them I want to use. There should be a proper column manager where you could easily select columns to display and then save the preset so that you could later easily load a different custom preset to a different inventory -- just like with filters.

This is probably an FR for the tracker if you agree.

Cheers.

[Goblin Hero]

New beta is ready. No new features is planned. If no bugs is found I'll release it this weekend.

a probably very niche filter request:

Implemented.

Implement a way to easily cycle through open panes in MA

Ctrl+Tab switches the panes.

it should say "the other inventory"
Also, some default shortcuts for the new buttons would be nice.

Implemented.

This is probably an FR for the tracker if you agree.

Agreed.

Also implemented in the new beta:
1. Summary for Buy/Sell fields
2. "What's new" dialog.
3. Proper inventories comparison in unique mode.

[Goblin Hero]

Beta test is ended. New version will be released very soon. Use the bug tracker for bugs\fr as usual.