What would also be nice is the ability to add or exclude custom professions.
Like, lets say that I have two custom professions assigned. One is a specialized hauler ("Builder") - only furniture and items. The other is a mix ("Carver") - Bonecrafting, carpentry, woodcarving, and bowyer.
I select Urist McTasker, and right-click, select 'Add profession(s)' and checkmark "Builder" and "Carver" and the program assigns him to Bonecrafting, carpentry, woodcarving, bowyer, furniture hauling, and item hauling.
Or I select Cog McDonothing and give him all the hauling skills along with healthcare, burial and cleaning. I then right-click on him and select 'Exclude profession(s)' and checkmark "Builder". This would deselect furniture hauling and item hauling and leave him with all of the other peasant tasks.
Could this not be done by just making a new custom prof called "Builder&Carver" that contains the union of their labors? I just ask because I'd rather not clutter up the interface more than it is. I think it's getting enough new features each release that I need to start thinking about UI stream-lining. Another problem would be if you had "Prof1" and "Prof2". Prof1 has mining and Prof2 doesn't. You tell the UI to combine them, is mining active or not?
Well, on the topic of cluttering up the interface - if it was a right-click menu like the new 'add all farmer tasks' or 'add all farming tasks', it wouldn't really clutter up the interface visually.
Re: Prof1 and Prof2 - it depends on what you're doing. Lets say that prof1 is mining and architecture and prof2 is just architecture.
If you
add prof1 and then
add prof2, then the dwarf has mining and architecture.
If you
add prof1 and then
subtract prof2, the dwarf has only mining because subtracting prof2 removes architecture.
If you
add prof2 and then
subtract prof1, the dwarf has no tasks because adding prof1 gave the dwarf architecture and subtracting prof1 removed both architecture and mining (even though the dwarf didn't have the mining task anyways).
Think of it like a Venn diagram. In this case, we have two circles - prof1 and prof2. Prof1 contains mining. Prof2 contains nothing. The section where prof1 and prof2 intersect contains architecture. Subtracting either profession will remove the tasks in that circle from the dwarf. In prof2's case, that's simply architecture; in prof1's case, that's both mining and architecture.
If I have a dwarf who cooks, brews, operates furnaces, and makes cheese (profession name: Chef), and I want a dwarf to do every farming task but those, I can add all farming tasks, and then subtract the Chef profession, and ta-da, done. (The dwarf would not gain or lose the ability to operate furnaces because it didn't have it in the first place.)
Basically, the reason I suggest this is so that we can minimize the number of necessary custom professions.
EDIT: I just thought of a way to think about the last example - I want the dwarf to have the tasks that are tasks == (farming && !(Chef)).