[chaley]

Originally Posted by kiwidude

Should it present the whole UI search dialog again, or just re-run the duplicate search in the background (I'm thinking the latter).

I agree -- run the search again.

Funnily enough I had started coding exactly that and then I ripped it out to see what people thought. That you have come up with it tells me it should be back in. The reason I removed it was I couldn't decide what to do if the selections don't match. For instance, should I require that only selected rows be on the current matching group? What happens if they intersect with another group? And do I just simply tell the user they are not on the right group and wait for them to select the right one, or do I warn them with a question dialog and then let them go ahead if they say yes?

Given that the operation adds exemptions for all the books in a group, selections really don't have any meaning. So, unless you are intending to allow subsets of the group (are you?), then I think it is sufficient to pop up a question box to tell the user that exemptions will be added for all the books in the group and the selections will be ignored -- OK? If the user is confused, then I hope s/he pushes cancel, re-locates the group, selects nothing, and does it again. Of course, you must tolerate the first book of a group being selected, or (probably better) any one book in the group.

I've been thinking more about the title/author independent algorithm thing, the more I think about it the more I am tempted. I would like to see two sliders with labels on the tickmarks (which sadly Qt cannot do out of the box). The slider would have a range values something like:
"Identical", "Similar", "Vaguely Similar", "Ignore"

One slider for each of title and author. If you set both title and author to "Ignore", then it does an ISBN match. A descriptive text box would summarise the combination you had selected a little bit like it does now.

A first time user would get it set to "Identical Title", "Identical Author". The "Vaguely Similar" (or "Fuzzy" or some better name!) author and title selections would do the fuzzier algorithms I suggested above.

Any thoughts? I'm just concerned about the permutations - break them apart and the problem goes away.

Although this sounds very cool, I suggest that you put it aside for the moment. Getting more feedback should be a priority at this point. I *know* I am not a normal user, and I suspect that neither Kacir or Starson17 are either.

Putting aside the above concern, I am not convinced that sliders are the right interface. They imply a level of 'analog' behavior that isn't there, and also don't support tool tips and the like well. I would lean toward radio buttons, with two groups. Group 1 would have ISBN, then the title choices, with the first choice being ignore. Group 2 would have the author choices with the first choice being 'ignore', which would line up horizontally with the title group's ignore (nothing beside the ISBN choice). Choosing ISBN would force group 2 to ignore and disable it. Choosing any title option would enable group 2. Choosing ignore for both options can be an error, or can make one big group.