This makes a lot of sense, actually. You've given me some insight I had not had before.
Currently, the "Add Players" dialog allows you to buy players into the tournament, and also has a "New Player" button that basically cancels the dialog and opens the "New Player" dialog. It was just a drop-in to help out. The "Add Players" dialog works as a single transaction, so to speak, in that you select everyone to buy-in at once, and everyone will be bought-in with the same parameters (same fee, same rake, same chips, etc).
With the addition of buy-in, rebuy, and add-on profiles, you will be able to specify named configuration profiles. This will make it much easier, to take an example, to have the concept of early and late arrivers, who receive different chip amounts. However, the way the "Add Players" dialog works today (and the "Buy-in Players" dialog, as well), you would still have to press the "Add Players" button, select only early or late arrivers (not mixed), select the appropriate profile, and then "OK". Then repeat, selecting the other players and the other profile. I think this is fine for today, but I can see how this could be more streamlined, as you put it.
So here's what I propose: the current dialogs stay as they are, with the exception that I'll be adding the profile selections. Then I'll add a new dialog, yet to be named but we'll call it "Mass Buy-in" dialog for now. I'm thinking this will have two sections: one lists the "Available" players (as the "Add Players" dialog does today), and the second section lists the players whom you have "Bought-in", along with their buy-in profile. A "New Player" button would open the "New Player" dialog (leaving the "Mass Buy-in" dialog open underneath). The "New Player" dialog would have the addition of the buy-in panel, so the player could be added and bought-in simultaneously. Once the "OK" button is pressed on the "New Player" dialog, the player is added to the "Available" section in the "Mass Buy-in" dialog, or to the "Bought-in" section, if they were bought-in on the "New Player" dialog. Players can be removed from the "Bought-in" section at any time.
The "Mass Buy-in" dialog will have buttons "OK" (or maybe it should be "Commit"), "Clear" (or "Reset") and "Close". Notice no "Cancel" button. The idea being if one wants to start over, they press "Clear", and after confirmation, all players are removed from the "Bought-in" section. But pressing "Close" only closes the dialog. By pressing the button to open the "Mass Buy-in" dialog again, all settings remain. The buy-ins don't actually occur until the dialog is "committed" ("OK" is pressed). So, if I open the "Mass Buy-in" dialog and buy-in 12 players, they're not really bought-in yet, they're just "ready to buy-in". If I then press "Close", then open the "Mass Buy-in" dialog again, the same 12 players will be in the "Bought-in" section.
I'm not sure whether or not I would want to add the "Add-on" or "Rebuy" parts. I'll have to consider it. I feel like these could really be covered with different buy-in profiles. But I know people play their own way, and even if they can buy a player in for twice the cost and receive twice the chips, they'd rather have the player buy-in for normal cost and also rebuy before the tournament starts.
FYI, here's another post on the same topic for some additional insight:
http://www.thetournamentdirector.net/forums/index.php?topic=183.0Thanks for the ideas. It really does help to hear how different people use the software. Keep 'em coming.