Hmm... tried Picard just now, and it didn't change the artist like I told it to. So I think I still need to play with that program a bit more. However! I did manage to figure out the XLD to iTunes track names. Its a bit complicated but...
Step 1) "Rip" using XLD by opening the iTunes folder as a CD and clicking the Find Metadata button until I found a metadata source I liked most.
Step 2) Save cue sheet as WhateverIWantItCalled.cue onto the desktop (don't trascode, burn, or anything)
Step 3) Open cue sheet in excel (Import, use the texfile option)
Step 4) Separate the track names out of all the crap the cue sheet gave me
Now, I use excel a lot, but in case someone else needs to know how to sort out the track names from the crap:
Everything is imported into column A from the cue file.
Into column B, I wrote =ISNUMBER(SEARCH("TITLE",A1)) which searches for the term "TITLE" in column A, row 1 and spits out "TRUE" if it the box has "TITLE" in it and "FALSE" if it does not.
Click and drag the formula so that for every filled in blank for column A, there's a formula in column B.
Select all, go to Data -> Sort by column B (largest to smallest). All of the "TRUE" should come up in order.
Delete everything that is false, and delete the first true thing, because that's the album name.
Then find-replace TITLE, quotation marks, and double spaces with nothing and that's the cleaned up track names.
Optionally add more metadata here in column B, C, whatever.
You don't need the formula column anymore. Delete it.
Step 5) Export as tab delimited text
Step 6) Run this beautiful script (after reading how it works! I didn't change the play order like it told me to and was confused): http://dougscripts.com/itunes/itinfo/importfromtext.php It can be launched right from the browser, which is pretty sweet. I don't change the script at all: It asks two questions in pop windows: "Is the playlist you're staring at the one you want to change?" and "where's the textfile I'm pulling things from?" In which case the first question is yes/no and the second question you double click on your textfile.
Perfect. Never had to delete anything out of the iTunes folder or put anything in or re-export or anything.
And it doesn't take long. My Final Fantasy VI soundtrack (three disks) was done in about ten minutes. Probably can do my next four disk soundtrack in less than that.
I'll still try to make Picard work because now I'm on a roll and want to figure out the easiest, laziest way of doing things. And generally I like to work with interfaces instead of scripts, though this script is ridiculously easy.