I don't know why I didn't think of this before. I like the idea so much, I hope it might make it into the next beta release...
What I'd dearly like to see is the option to have people records automatically updated—if and when they're selected from the Movie view. That way, any new link selected would result in the target record being updated within a few seconds. The same thing could be done for existing records that haven't been updated within x days. That would ensure the data viewed for existing records isn't stale.
(See the linked post, and the one linked to it, for more background—particularly the problem of keeping people records up-to-date for a large (500+) collection of movies.)
I did consider whether it might be easier and more useful to apply the optional behaviour whenever a people record is selected, not just when a link in a movie record is selected. But that would be far too annoying when viewing or working with a number of different records in the People view. So this would have to be something that only happens when a link is selected from a movie record.
Selecting a link would trigger an import—using the default/'favourite' plugin or script—under the following conditions:
- Data has never been imported for the record (that might be determined by comparing [Date Modified] to [Date Added], or perhaps by more direct means); or
- Data has been imported, but [Date Modified] is more than x days in the past ('x' being a user-specified preference).
[Date Modified] is updated whenever a record has been in edit mode. It will also be updated if something other than the primary plugin is used to import data. It's therefore not a perfect indication of whether data has been imported. But for most users in most circumstances, it should work fine.
For those of us who find impractical to keep all people records up-to-date, this option would provide the next best thing: Any link used to view a person would result in the data being updated immediately—if necessary.
Perhaps a bit more involved, but a future embellishment of such a feature could be a command for updating
all people linked to a particular movie a once. I wouldn't use that for all movies, but some of particular interest for which I'm likely to view the records of a number of people, I'd much rather do that than wait for each one I choose to view to be updated.
