@jctay thank you, and no offence taken at all: an engineer's view is exactly what helps here.
Drag and drop
It is in ChromIQ 4.3.32, which is being built right now and will be on the
releases page within the hour: files and folders can be dropped from your file manager on almost every file row, each outlined in its tab's or tool's colour, and a drop does what that row's browse button does (the .mxf too, on the Measure tab's import box). In Measurement info several readings can be dropped at once, and the notice about files not added now names each file and why. We tested with simulated drops, so please tell me how real drags behave on your system.
Your workflow idea
Most of it already exists, just not in one place and under other names, so you could not have known. The turned export is exactly your patch reordering. With Preferences > Beta > "Also write an i1Profiler chart that matches the printed ChromIQ sheet (i1Pro 2 and i1Pro 3, beta)" ticked, every chart that qualifies gets the .txf files, an order file and a how-to note in the run's exports folder when you generate it. Importing the .mxf on the Measure tab (IMPORT) puts the readings back into the chart's order. Importing is optional: Tools > Convert i1Profiler → TI3 makes a plain .ti3 (in i1Profiler's order, fine for a profile because every reading carries its RGB values), and Build Profile loads an .mxf directly. For a few patches there is "Patch-by-patch mode (-p)" on the Measure tab (Manual).
What is missing is a Tools entry that makes the .txf for a chart, and ChromIQ cannot drive i1Profiler, so loading the .txf and saving the .mxf stay manual. We will make all this easier to find.
A correction, with an apology
In post 150134 I told you to export the .txf after generating the chart with the spacers you print. That was wrong, sorry, and it caused the confusion: a chart with spacers gets no .txf, and generating again replaces the earlier turned files. i1Profiler's own chart has touching patches of one width, so a spacer would be counted as a patch. Spacers must stay at "None" on the very chart you print; that is the one real rule here, not caution.
The ruler
To you and
@pharmacist: for the i1Pro 3, the ArgyllCMS 3.5.0 driver code that ChromIQ uses already reads the zebra ruler and places the readings by position. For the i1Pro 2 it does not, so the patch edges come from the readings alone. The i1Pro 2's ruler data is not documented; the way to learn it is to record what i1Profiler and the instrument say to each other over USB during a scan on the ruler (single and dual scan) on a Windows PC, then see whether ChromIQ's measurement engine can use it. That is uncertain and would take several rounds of testing with a real i1Pro 2; if the recordings show a way, we would offer it as an option to try.
@pharmacist, a question, not a promise: we are preparing a small recording tool for this, like the one for the i1iO (it only records and saves a file, it changes nothing). If you have an i1Pro 2 and a Windows PC, would you run it once when it is ready? We will post here when it is.
The RGB values (150154)
ChromIQ already uses them: they must agree on every patch or the file is refused, and for a file only saved again on another layout they show each entry still belongs to its patch. But i1Profiler copies them from the chart file it was given, so readings taken on other patches still carry correct RGB values. Only the measured colours come from the paper, which is why ChromIQ checks them for a file saved on another grid.
Good luck with the scanner and camera profiling, I look forward to hearing how it goes!
