gustebeast
Re: why are snapshot folders timestamps
One of the things I wanted from snapshots was to be able to push one button and have the snapshot saved without having to stop and type in a name. That way you can save multiple snapshots whenever the mood strikes during a practice session, and go back and inspect them later. Since these are files, they have to go under a folder with a unique name, so I generate a name using a timestamp both to ensure that the name is unique, and to provide something a bit more meaningful than snapshot1, snapshot2, etc.
You raise some great points about the nice name and ordering. Generated names work well enough when you're just accumulating snapshots for a period of time, but eventually you'll want to organize the snapshots you have: deleting, renaming, and ordering, so you have a palette of known snapshots to call up.
The main reason the "nice name" isn't the folder name is because they no longer sort in chronological order, and I had been thinking of NextSnapshot and PrevSnapshot as moving forward and backward in time. But if you think of snapshots more as being unrelated starting points, rather than chronological history that isn't useful.
I like the idea of being able to rename the snapshot folder, that makes the UI simpler, there is no "nice name" there is just the name, which starts off generated and you can change it later. For those that want chronological ordering I can do that in a different way.
But even with that, a predictable order is kind of hard to control. You would have to ensure that the names you pick sort alphabetically in the order you want. I could let you specify an order number with each snapshot and use that for sorting, but in the end, it's just another name to manage. Snapshot "x" with order "3" could just as well have the single name "3-x".
How does this sound: Nice Name goes away, and there is just a Rename menu item. This becomes the folder name for the snapshot. When snapshots are presented they are sorted by folder name, which means the names you pick will be clustered together away from the timestamps. I could also add a prefix to the timestamps like z- to make sure they sort to the bottom. Then I'll add an "id" column to the left of the name that has the sorted index position
of that snapshot to make it easier to see without counting rows in the table.
Next/Prev will work on the alphabetically sorted list. If someone did want to do chronological next/prev I'd add more functions or function arguments like SnapshotNextTime or SnapshotNext (time).
A more complex but probably more obvious way to order these is to maintain a hidden order number inside the snapshot folder. This number defines the order of rows in the table. If you then click-drag table rows, this changes this hidden order number so that they will sort in the order you see in the table. You can name snapshots anything you want, since we're not sorting alphabetically.