[Feature Request] Per-Format Export Settings

[UnknownExplorer13]

I had an old local fork of V4 Subtitle Edit where I edited the exporter for LRC lyrics to exclude tags and add spaces after the line timestamps. I did this by commenting out the tag writing lines and adding a space to the line formatting. I'd love to have this as an option in V5 but doing so would require either:

• Adding another save format for each of the LRC formats (12 formats in total; 3 for no spaces+tags (currently supported), 3 for no spaces+no tags, 3 for with spaces+tags, 3 for with spaces+no tags)
• Always include spaces and always have tags excluded
• Add an "Export Settings" window before the save file dialog for each option

The first method pollutes the UI with more formats for such a small change. The second one alienates users that prefer having no spaces and/or having the tags in the file. The third one would work but it adds an extra step in the export process which would get very annoying if working on multiple files in a row.

Adding per-format export settings would help massively in adding features like this and could further help in decluttering the amount of formats by merging similar formats under one and exporting based on these settings (EG: LRC Lyrics (.lrc), LRC Lyrics ms (.lrc), and LRC Lyrics, no end time (.lrc) becomes just LRC Lyrics (.lrc)).

I made some super quick mockups of the settings pages for how this could look. Thoughts?

[niksedk]

Some formats has properties in the File menu:

Note that LRC has a few different formats:

[UnknownExplorer13]

Nice to know that it's already available for some formats! Sorry for the massive incoming essay but I really feel like a feature like this is worth implementing!

With this feature request, I'm thinking about how to make the program more user-friendly. In my case, LRC files are what I mainly use Subtitle Edit for. I do timing by ear in LRCGET and move to Subtitle Edit to make them more accurate by giving them 3-point ms precision. After I save the file as an LRC Lyrics ms (.lrc) file (which I either have to switch to or set as my default save format) I have to open it externally to remove the tags and add spaces after the timestamps, which is a step that could be avoided if these options were able to be set within Subtitle Edit.

With the current implementation of some formats having format properties (as you mentioned) and others not, it's a coin flip on whether a user will have to edit their files externally/change something before exporting to suit their preferences. Unifying these settings under a single menu gives the user more control over how their files are saved, under one menu they know exists, where they can easily check if a format has strict or customizable rules (Strict = Doesn't need an options menu; Customizable = Options menu exists).

On the front of reducing UI clutter, with LRC files as the example, the code for opening and saving these formats is very similar across all 3 of the format types. You can reduce the amount of code needed for these files by using a single reader function with if/else or case statements to determine which format the file uses. The export functions can have the same done to them. Instead of 3 slightly different ToText() functions for 3 different formats, you could refactor the biggest differences out into their own function if needed and call that based on user preference (smaller differences can use if/else or case statements) and merge them into a single format file.

This is the difference between writing an LRC Lyrics (.lrc) file and an LRC Lyrics ms (.lrc) file. These sections of code could easily be called or skipped based on how the user would like their file to be saved.

These changes would allow us to shrink the codebase and declutter the UI at the same time by having one unified function for the format that does all the checks to determine what sub-format the file is upon opening it, importing it accordingly, and then calling the relevant sections on export for how to write the code according to user preference.

Obviously this can't be done for every format but there are a decent amount that would benefit from this due to how similar and/or easily adaptable the code is. From a quick browse, these look like some of the easier ones to start with:

• AdobeEncoreLineTabNewLine/AdobeEncoreLineTabs
• AdobeEncoreWithLineNumbers/AdobeEncoreWithLineNumbersNtsc
• AvidCaption/AvidCaptionDropFrame
• Captionate/CaptionateMs
• Csv4/Csv5
• Lrc/Lrc3DigitsMs/LrcNoEndTime
• RhozetHarmonic/RhozetHarmonicImage
• Rtf1/Rtf2
• Tsv1/Tsv2
• Utx/UtxFrames
• WhisperRaw/WhisperRaw2

The only hurdle would probably be figuring out an initial way to differentiate between the sub-formats on open/import but once that's done you could set an enum value or something like that to determine how the rest of the opening/importing process goes.