New Edit Feature for Media in 8.1.1.0

RootsMagic
1

* New: Added “View” and “Edit” buttons for edit media panel. “View” displays images in viewer. “Edit” opens the media item in the media editing program associated with the media type.

This enhancement in 8.1.1.0 may seem like a very small thing. But for handling media in RM in general, I think it has a potential to be a huge game changer in a very positive way. But there is a little glitch in the way it was implemented, at least there is for me.

First some background. For years, I have entered nearly all my media into RM as type File rather than as type Image. Doing so caused RM to open the media in an external viewer rather than using RM’s internal viewer. There were three reasons that I preferred an external viewer.

  1. The built-in viewer prior to RM8 rendered documents such as census images so poorly that the documents were essentially illegible.
  2. The built-in viewer prior to RM8 was also an editor. Simply doing an Ok out of the viewer would save your file, thereby changing the file’s date and also reducing the resolution of the file for lossy formats such as JPG.
  3. The built-in viewer prior to RM8 ran in a modal window, locking out any further activity in RM until the image was dismissed.

RM8’s internal media viewer solves the first two problems, but not the third. And even though the RM8 internal media viewer renders files much more legibly than did the RM7 internal media viewer, I still find Irfanview to have quite a few advantages, over and above running in a separate window which effectively is non-modal. So I have left my images in RM8 entered mostly as type File rather than as type Image.

An obvious disadvantage of my approach is that it makes it essentially impossible to use RM’s Scrapbook reports, and I would like to be able to use Scrapbook reports. So I was very excited to see that RM 8.1.1.0 would let me enter files as type Image and still open them in an external viewer.

That brings us to the little glitch. Suppose I have a JPG file that is entered into RM8 as type File. RM8 opens it in Irfanview. That is the desired behavior. Suppose I have a JPG file that is entered into RM8 as type Image. The 8.1.1.0 Media => View icon opens the media file in RM8’s internal viewer. The 8.1.1.0 Media => Edit icon opens the media file for me in Microsoft Paint rather than in Irfanview as I would prefer. That is the little glitch.

I find Microsoft Paint to be a very useful and very simple graphics editor, and I make very heavy use of it. So I know how to use it, and I like it a lot. But it is not a very good viewer - nowhere near as good as Irfanview. And Irfanview has a little bit of editing capability, but nowhere near as much as Microsoft Paint and nowhere near as much as I need. What I really want is to enter image files into RM8 as type Image and to open them from RM8 in Irfanview. I’m quite happy to do any needed editing from completely outside of RM8 using Microsoft Paint. So what to do?

I’m quite sure that RM’s response will be that I should make Irfanview into my Windows default JPG editor. But while I’m in Windows, I want to be able to Open a JPG file with Irfanview and to Edit a JPG file with Paint. That’s what I have been doing for years and it works great. I don’t even have to set it up. Windows defaults to Microsoft Paint as the Edit program for JPG and other image formats. And when I install Irfanview, it sets itself as the default Open program for JPG and other image formats without disturbing Microsoft Paint as the Edit program.

So I’m not sure what I’m going to do and I’m not sure what I think the RM developers should do. But I’m pretty sure there are going to be a gazillion questions from RM8 users who wish for the 8.1.1.0 Media => Edit icon to open the image file in a different program than the one it does. And for example, I would be most happy if the 8.1.1.0 Media => Open icon would open my media files in Irfanview and if the 8.1.1.0 Media => Edit icon would open my media files in Microsoft Paint, even though I had entered the media files into RM as type Image. I can’t see that happening, but I think that would be perfect for users who have a good media viewer installed on their system. The RM8 internal viewer would obviously still need to be around as a backup for users who don’t have a good media viewer installed on their system. And for example, I don’t really know what most Mac users would prefer, except that the Mac has a very good reputation for handling media files very well.

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By the way, my message above didn’t fully acknowledge that RM8’s internal image viewer does open now in a somewhat separate window. It seems to me that it’s acting like a modal window. For example, if it’s open and even if it’s minimized, it locks out the main RM8 window. But it does seem separate and it’s not just in a sliding panel. I’ll have to play with it a while to see if that will meet my needs. An hour or two of playing with it is not enough to know for sure. But if it does meet my needs, then having the Edit button cause the image to open in Paint would be just fine and this whole rant would be moot.

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You can use this registry change to set the default program to edit an image in windows.

4

RM8 no longer uses the default program to edit an image when you click on the Edit button. Instead, RM8 has been changed to use the default program to view an image when you click on the Edit button.

In all truth, most programs that can view an image can also edit it and vice versa. I suspect that the change was made in RM8 because there is an easy way in Windows to change the default image viewer program in the Windows user interface without going through regedit. By contrast, there is not an easy way in WIndows to change the default image editing program in the WIndows user interface. You have to use regedit instead.

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This works on windows outside of RM8 (using the EDIT menu item when right clicking on a .jpg file) but does not seem to work in RM8. Maybe Bruce can let us know how RM8 identifies the .jpg editor it uses.

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The external program that RM8 invokes is the program you get as the Open program with right click, not the program you get as the Edit program with right click.

Another way to say the same thing is that it’s the program you can set with Windows file associations from the Windows user interface as the default program for things like JPG files.

When RM8 first introduced the icon for calling an external program for image files, it used the program you get as the Edit program with right click. For most Windows users, that is Microsoft Paint. Users didn’t like RM8 calling Microsoft Paint. And you can’t change the Windows Edit program from the Windows user interface. You can only change the Edit program with regedit. So Bruce changed RM8 to use the program get as the Open program with right click.

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