Comments: ** Comment from web user: Meklos **
The link between a location and a task is the file matching lists, right? If I don't keep those lists in sync between my Locations and my Tasks, then I end up either not looking for the right files or not doing what I want to those files.
If you want to do different things to different files in different locations, or even the same location, it can get complicated and tedious. For example, here are some of my goals...
1) Comskip/cut and H.264 compress shows my kid watches, do not archive. Place into dedicated folder structure for him.
2) Comskip/cut and H.264 compress shows my wife watches. Do archive. Move to a 'processed' folder structure.
3) H.264 compress movies I drop into a specified folder. Output to another specified folder, to be picked up and renamed/moved by something like YAMMM.
To do this would require that I keep lots of filename lists (not folder names or locations) synchronized between my Locations and my Tasks. But if I could do this:
1) Location "Recorded TV". Associated task: Sort and rename only. Sort to a folder under Recorded TV.
2) Location "specified folders under Recorded TV which match shows my wife watches" (I would select this via a tree and checkboxes instead of a list on a line). Associated task: Comskip/cut, H.264 compress, move to "Encoded TV", archive original file in "Wife Shows"
3) Location "specified folders under Recorded TV which match shows my kid watches". Associated task: Comskip/cut, H.264 compress, move to "Kid TV", do not archive
4) Location "movie drop folder". Associated task: H.264 compress, move to "Movies" folder, do not archive.
Doing this today would involve synchronizing file and folder lists between different tasks, and differentiating the archiving isn't possible today. I understand the goal of simplifying the GUI, I'm just saying that creating it might be overall simpler to let people create "places to watch" and associate them with a "thing to do" task instead of linking them via file matching lists which only exist inside the locations/tasks.
By looking at the GUI today, I would not be able to determine what was actually going to happen without doing a comparison of these file lists between all my locations and all my tasks.
As for the custom archive path, each task created would be responsible for managing the associated archive. If the task is deleted, the archive ceases to be managed. A warning might be popped up on the modification of the archive location or the deletion of the task saying basically "You created an archive for this - would you like to see what's in it?"