[Shotwell] Shotwell 0.11: Call for testing - TAGS!

[Adam Dingle]

On 08/29/2011 08:01 PM, pt wrote:
> On 29 August 2011 16:45, Adam Dingle<adam at yorba.org>  wrote:
>> On 08/29/2011 03:17 PM, pt wrote:
>>> It seems that Shotwell will put your tags into an existing tree *only*
>>> if you have the full branch tagged.
>>>
>>> e.g. if you have in the tree 'people/family/mom' and you add a photo
>>> tagged just 'mom' shotwell will *add* a root-level tag 'mom', instead
>>> of using the already-existing one.
>> I agree that in this case it would be better if Shotwell matched the
>> existing hierarchical tag 'people/family/mom'.  I've ticketed this here:
>>
>> http://redmine.yorba.org/issues/4051
>>
>>> There is a big mess with duplicate tags: it seems that they are
>>> allowed on different branches, but not in the same branch.
>> I don't understand.  Shotwell does allow duplicate tag names in different
>> branches, e.g. 'friends/rusty' and 'pets/rusty'.  It of course doesn't allow
>> two duplicate tag names in the same branch, e.g. two different tags both
>> called 'friends/rusty'.  But how is this a mess?
> Because, following the example you do below, if I have a duplicate tag
> e.g. friends/dave and family/dave, when I import a photo with the tags
> 'friends', 'family' and 'dave' what will Shotwell do?

Today, Shotwell will create new top-level tags 'friends', 'family', and 
'dave', which doesn't seem right (hence ticket 4051 above).  Once that's 
implemented, Shotwell would tag the photo with both 'friends/dave' and 
'family/dave' in this situation.  A more difficult question is what 
Shotwell should do if you the library contains both friends/dave and 
family/dave and you import a photo which only has the tag 'dave'.  In 
that case I think we should probably prompt the user.

We originally considered disallowing duplicate tags throughout the 
entire library to avoid situations like these.  But we looked at several 
other photo programs which support hierarchical tags and found that they 
did allow duplicate names, and we wanted to allow users to import their 
libraries from these programs, so we decided to allow duplicates in the 
end.  Of course nobody has to create duplicate tags if they don't want 
to.  :)

>
> More specifically, I still don't know if Shotwell writes single flat
> tags to the pictures metadata into 'Keywords' (as it seems from your
> example below) or if it writes 'Hierarchical' tags like 'friends|dave'
> and 'family|dave'. I would prefer the first one, or at least both
> option.

If you tag a photo with 'friends/dave' and then export from Shotwell, it 
writes these IPTC and XMP tags:

Iptc.Application2.Keywords                   String      4  dave
Iptc.Application2.Keywords                   String      7  friends
Xmp.dc.subject                               XmpBag      2  dave, friends
Xmp.digiKam.TagsList                         XmpSeq      2  friends, 
friends/dave
Xmp.MicrosoftPhoto.LastKeywordXMP            XmpBag      2  friends, 
friends/dave

(To see this, run 'exiv2 -pa' on a photo you've exported.)  So you can 
see that Shotwell writes both flat and hierarchical forms of the tags.  
It would be nice to write the hierarchical tags to some vendor-neutral 
XMP tag as well (not containing "digiKam" or "Microsoft"); for this, see 
http://redmine.yorba.org/issues/4050 .

>
>> As I mentioned above, duplicate tag names in different branches are allowed.
>>   If you don't like that, you don't have to create any duplicates like this.
>>   :)
> Again, see before: if the tags are flat how will Shotwell know to
> which branch the tag belongs?

See my response above.

>
>> Aside from the ticket 4051 I listed above (matching existing hierarchical
>> names on import), what other change would you like, specifically?
> I'd like to have the possibility of 'dummy tags' like below, or the
> possibility of tagging only a part of the branch, not the full branch.
> It is mostly a matter of organisation.

You can certainly tag only a part of the branch, not the full branch, in 
Shotwell today.  For example, if you have a tag 'friends' and a subtag 
'dave', you can apply just 'friends' to a photo.

>
>>> Please consider the option of having 'helper' or 'dummy' tags that
>>> don't get automatically added to the photos, with the only purpose of
>>> organising the tags tree. And believe me, with several tens of
>>> thousands photos as I have, the tags tree will become quite large.
>> I'm not sure I understand.  Today, if you create a tag 'friends/dave', then
>> when you export a photo with this tag the exported photo will have both tags
>> 'friends' and 'dave'.  Are you saying that you'd like to be able to mark
>> 'friends' as a dummy tag which isn't written into any exported photo?
> Exactly like that. This way I can have 'dummy' tags for keeping
> organised my tag tree: e.g. subject (dummy) / friends / dave  and
> subject (dummy) / nature (dummy) / water (dummy) / lake.
>
> It basically depends on how many tags you use.

OK - now I see what you're asking.  To be honest I think this won't be a 
high priority for us since I don't see that it does great harm to write 
out these 'dummy' tags when exporting as Shotwell does today, but feel 
free to file a ticket if you'd like us to consider this in the future.  
Cheers -

adam