Oscar's Renamer is extremely powerful in that, it is a freeform text editor! You can manipulate the text however you want and it will rename the files
Whereas BRU is more restrictive as it has a format for it's text files and slight unintuitive to use. Read the help file for it. (and be sure to select all the files in the display to see it's new name)
Having read your post, zork, I took a look at Oscar Renamer and it reminded me so much of the old DOpus on the Amiga.
The listers there behaved pretty much like text editors - AFAIR, you had a cursor and much of the standard text editing functionality to edit filenames, plus you could use Tab to jump from file names to other columns (dates, attributes etc.) and edit those, too.
May be wishful thinking, but if Jon had to use custom code for listers anyway to support Tiles view, this could be implemented, too. I fully understand that the standard Windows list view control that powered Details mode cannot do this, but with the new custom control, such convenient fullscreen file metadata editing could be supported at least in Details and Power modes. Now THAT would be another killer feature that I have never ever seen (even approximated) on Windows.
Oscar's Renamer is extremely powerful in that, it is a freeform text editor! You can manipulate the text however you want and it will rename the files
Whereas BRU is more restrictive as it has a format for it's text files and slight unintuitive to use. Read the help file for it. (and be sure to select all the files in the display to see it's new name)
This would be the clincher for me. The whole reason I've opted to trial this product was to make metadata manipulation and searching/browsing/rediscovery easier. DOpus is pricey for a file manager, but hell- I'd pay the full price just to add this feature to the basic XP Windows Explorer. That's how badly I need it.