Perhaps this has already been considered. AFAICT, the behaviour only exists in the tree. ("Pane Tagging" has to be activated before it's available.) It's perfectly consistent—Windows convention or not—with how most people would expect a tree to behave. If such behaviours are to be removed because some are afraid of them, why even bother having a tree?
Rick, you based your post on the assertion that the drag and drop tag editing behavior only occurs in the tree. That is not my experience. I never have Pane tagging enabled and I never change tag values by dragging in the tree.
I use pane views with panes for Composer, Work, Artist and other tags. I use the pane area only to select files based on tag values. I have gotten the warning dialog that MC is about the change a large number of files when I accidentally moved the mouse from a spot in a pane to another spot with the left mouse button down. I wrote about a behavior I have experienced a number of times.
I've been using the Mac / Windows GUI since the mid 80s. I understand the concepts and have no difficulty using that sort of interface. However, I do occasionally make this sort of mistake where I don't fully release the left mouse button before I move the mouse. I'd prefer that MC not punish me for such mistakes.
I'd also prefer not having to warn my wife about a behavior that might make catastrophic changes to our music library.
Until Matt wrote in this thread that there would always be a confirmation dialog before such changes, I did no know that any such safeguard would always exist. Matt, is that true if one a single file would be changed?
If WAF is the concern, why even let her know the tree exists? If she's so techno-phobic, surely the best solution is to design a view that only includes the information she needs and works in a manner she is comfortable with. The primary views can be designed this way. Tell her those are for her, and she need not be concerned with your more complex child views or the tree.
This part of your post is quite offensive. Most people who develop commercial software for the Windows understand that designed software so that it is accessible to ordinary PC users is a good idea.
When you use a large, complex program like Microsoft Word or MC, it is very natural to identify the features you need and become comfortable using them. If you don't need other features, you may never investigate them. You certainly don't have such unused features in mind as you use a program. If a mistake in using the UI exposes you to consequences because of features you were not aware of, that isn't a good result.
The problem I just described occurs in the pane area of a single view. The presence or absence of the tree would not matter. I use only a single level of genre specific views under audio; child views are never visible.
By the way, my wife has been using PCs for many years and managed a group of mainframe programmers in her job.
And the best thing you can do for them is use the convention, not invent something even more difficult to learn. Making these things "safer" also makes it more difficult to do things that should be easy.
I described the functional problem I see as a user. I did not advocate that a particular remedy was necessary. I have learned that describing a problem before you try to decide on a solution often produces a better result that jumping to conclusions does.
That said, I'd prefer that no action in the pane area be able to change tags in my files unless pane tagging is enabled.
I'd also prefer to be able to communicate with Matt about something that I find a problem without your posting an offensive put-down based on your incomplete understanding.
Bill
