qbasicer
Interface Improvements for Mod Support
This is a great app, it's simple and does what it needs to do but could use some improvement. the main interface should have 3 panels instead of 2. There should be panel on the left that has a list of all saved .zdl profiles. Clicking on one instantly loads it into zdl and shows all of the mods in the "External Files" panel and selects the source ports/Iwad. ("Extra Command Line Arguments" would also be loaded) It would make more logical sense to have the panels arranged from left to right: .zdl profiles -> Source Port/IWADS -> External Files.
Having a default location for loading/saving .zdl files would be another good QOL feature. (It would also be required for the profile panel)
Bonus points for allowing custom icons and/or screenshots for each profile.
Agreed; being able to export setups is nice (and absolutely essential for allowing mod creators to ship importable files to make setup a breeze), but for day-to-day usage I would much rather have an "internal" list of mod setups than manage *.ZDL files at the OS level.
Seems to me that making ZDL "aware" of the concept of a list of persistent mod profiles could also pave the way for stuff like automatic mod updates in a future release; each mod has a URI in its metadata that contains an update link which ZDL could iterate through to...well, we're getting way out of scope for this issue but you get the idea. :)
While we are on this topic, is it possible to add ability to automatically load .deh files alongside specified WADs?
I was rereading the top post, and it sounds like it would take the model of a music library manager (e.g iTunes) and treat the .zdl files as playlists.
To me, if we're using a music library manager metaphor, the .zdl files are more like individual songs. Basically, the idea is to replace having a directory full of .zdl files with a list view inside ZDL (maybe with columns to show metadata?).