"Rescan Library" dropdown item is poorly placed and badly named

[RAWRR]

The "Rescan Library" option in the Library dropdown would be better located on/in/near the library part of the gui, and the "Library" menu done away with. I think this because the only unique tool in the dropdown is Rescan; the other two are quite intuitively available in the right click/context options of the left pane of the library in association with their respective items. It has always struck me as odd that the library dropdown is so sparse, and looking at it now, it seems vestigial.

Also, "Rescan" is somewhat vague - ok, it scans, but what exactly does it do after the scan is finished? And more importantly, what information does it scan for exactly? I think it would be better to call the action "Refresh". Even though that is similarly vague as to what exactly gets refreshed, it at least implies both an action and a result, rather than simply an action.

[Max Linke (max-linke)]

Removing the library dropdown menu is actually a good idea. Most other programs I know have the rescan button
in a tools or option menu, we could move this to the options as well.

As for the naming I like rescanning, we could add a tooltip that this only checks for new/moved files and doesn't care for the content of the file.

[RAWRR (rawrr)]

Moving it to the options menu seems like a good idea. Looking at the options menu right now though, sparse as it is it *also* is a bit jumbled and looks kind of random... for instance why is the toggle for keyboard shortcuts grouped with broadcasting and recording options? But that's another issue I guess.

As for the tooltip, dropdown menus don't have them, so that won't help there; and I do think that the rescan/refresh button/action needs to be more explicit about what it does, either by name or by tooltip.

Would a tooltip be possible in the library? I see that they exist in the analyze pane, which, with a little reorganization, would probably be the best place to put a rescan/refresh button. I say reorganization because in this case the "analyze" button would have to become two or three buttons, "analyze to update file content", analyze to update new/moved files", analyze to update bpm/waveform data". Or there could be on "analyze" button and three toggles defining which ones get included in the analysis.

[RAWRR (rawrr)]

(so at that point, the the top of the analyze pane would have the following: two radio buttons new+all, a "select all" button, an "analyze" button, and three toggles with labels representing options for "analyze to update file content/metadata", analyze to update new/moved files", analyze to update bpm/waveform data")

[Be (be.ing)]

What about moving this function to the File menu? What about renaming it to "Scan For New Files"?

[RAWRR (rawrr)]

I think it is kind of obvious the entire menu system needs reorganization. It has gotten better since I filed this bug in 1.10; there is now a divider between toggle keyboard shortcuts and the the broadcasting/recording options, which are grouped intuitively together.

"Scan for new files" seems like good wording. But we do have the option to scan for new files at startup already, so it may not be worth it just for when you add tracks to your main directory during a Mixxx run - adding actual files to an actual file directory while running Mixxx, and then urgently needing to scan them in, seems like a genuine edge case to me. This bug was filed with concern about updating metadata primarily, when it wasn't clear what rescan actually did.

Oh wait, it still isn't clear what rescan actually does 9_9

Ok, so here are some super-relevant questions related to "scanning" and the specific things to "scan" for:

-BPM
-ID3 tags/metadata
-waveforms
-key
-presence or absence

So before we proceed further with anything else realted to this bug or before we even file another one, we need to know what "rescan" does and does not do.

Furthermore, we need to know what "analyze" does and does not do - for instance, does *it* scan for metadata? Or does it exclusively conduct waveform and BPM analysis?

As far as I can tell, we have three different "scan" powers scattered throughout the interface. We have:

-"Reload Track Metadata" via right-click in the Library
-"Rescan Library" via the Library menubar menu
-"Analyze" via the Analyze pane in the Library

As for the Library menu, it still seems like it should be removed - either that, or substantiated with more items, perhaps clarified powers among those listed here. Obviously things should only appear in that dropdown that are either whole-library actions, or add-to-library actions, so that limits the items possible.

[RAWRR (rawrr)]

I mean, I'd be for adding to the Library menubar item:

-update metadata
-generate missing data
-remove deleted files
-scan for new files

OR: unifying all of the powers into one action "scan"-or-"Analyze". In other words, just selecting that button/menu item would add:

-BPM
-ID3 tags/metadata
-waveforms
-key
-presence or absence

...to Mixxx's various databases. In this case, it would also be super helpful if Mixxx could avoid redoing the work when it isn't necessary, i.e. when all the tags and waveforms are already there. Like for instance currently it isn't clear if "select all" in the analyze pane actually re-analyzes tracks that already had full data saved.

[Swiftb0y (swiftb0y)]

Mixxx now uses GitHub for bug tracking. This bug has been migrated to:
https://github.com/mixxxdj/mixxx/issues/6736