Comment by m01

I get that you wanted to make a general point. In case you're still curious about this specific case:

It's been a long time since I last used Mp3tag, so I tried the latest Mp3tag in WINE (seems to work nicely) for comparison. I think the basic operations (editing tags) actually do work similarly: in both you select file(s), edit the tag you want to in the GUI and changes get applied to any selected file(s) when you press save.

Renaming filenames based on tags also works according to that principle in kid3, you select the files you want to change (rename) and then use the `Format (arrow pointing from tag fields to filename field)` to specify what the filename pattern should look like and then use the `Tag 1` or `Tag 2` button to fill the placeholders from the (e.g.) ID3v1/ID3v2 tag, and click save to apply the changes.

In Mp3tag you'd also highlight the files, but unlike other tag editing operations you use the `convert->tag to filename` menu item/button, which pops up a wizard asking for the pattern and confirmation.

I'm guessing coming from Mp3tag you tried to use kid3's `Tools->Apply filename format` option, which I believe ensures the filename doesn't include special characters by doing string replacements (these are configured in the settings under `Files->Filname format`). I was wondering if that was perhaps confusingly named, so I had a look in Mp3tag to see what this functionality was called there, but I couldn't find it. I'm sure it's possible somehow, but it probably involves scripting [1].

I noticed that Mp3tag seems to be able to automatically fetch album art whereas in kid3 you need to get the image yourself. I suspect more advanced functionality (scripting etc) will work differently in the two tools.

[1] https://community.mp3tag.de/t/character-replacement-for-tag-...