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<p>Hi everyone,</p>
<p>IMHO, the export/import feature via *.kim files could need some
love. I use this feature quite extensively and stumbled across
several smaller and larger problems. Some of that might be bugs,
some might be usability issues and some might just be
p.e.b.k.a.c...</p>
<p>My main reason to use more than one database is backup. I do not
need every single image on off-site backup - only "valuable"
images. Thus a curated subset gets moved (via kim) to a separate
database / folder tree that is then backed up regularly.</p>
<p>kim feature:</p>
<p>1) There seems to be a size limit of ~4GB for *.kim files: I can
easily export larger *.kim files but on import KPA says "cannot
open the file for reading" (or so). Exporting the images with
"copy next to kim file" works, but that clutters my folder with
1000s of files.<br>
ark also complains about the files (after renaming them to *.zip).
Thus, the size limit is most probably a feature of the zip
library.<br>
=> It would be nice if the size limit should be flagged before
exporting. Or the export stops when the limit comes close while
giving the option to split the export into multiple files.</p>
<p>2) After importing the images the files do not retain their
original time stamp (on the file system). This is OK for images
but bad for videos, as date/time gets updated from "exif" data -
but in case of videos from the file system time stamp. There is a
corresponding bug report: <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=511440"
style="white-space: pre-wrap;">https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=511440</a></p>
<p>I have a workaround, but this is quite clumsy: a script that
reads the (possibly corrected) timestamps from index.xml and
updates the exif data (also in videos), then a script to touch the
files after import with the timestamp from exif and finally "read
exif data from file" in KPA. sigh!</p>
<p>2a) The timestamp formats in index.xml and *.kim are different. I
there a technical reason or is that just baggage from the past?</p>
<p>3) The default folder for reading the import file from: When I
import several *.kim files in one session, the file open dialog
for the *.kim file shows the last destination folder for the
images, not the folder the *.kim files reside in. It would be nice
if KPA could remember where the kim file came from and propose to
read the next kim file from there.</p>
<p>4) The import dialog: the destination folder should be asked
first, because that is the one dialog, where you need to input
something most often.</p>
<p>5) The category matching on import: it would be nice to filter
for category items that do not match 1:1 existing items - to be
able to correct them. These are often overlooked because KPA
automagically selects "similar" existing items. This can cause
quite a bit of trouble.</p>
<p>6) I would really like a method to synchronize
categories/category items between databases</p>
<p>one more thing:</p>
<p>7) When deleting files from disk (from the KPA dialog), the files
get added to the blocklist. But they shouldn't. Deleted from disk
and deleted from the database should be enough. I do not know how
often I had to clear the blocklist manually with the editor
(thanks for a human readable database!). This is a problem if I
need to import the same images again (e.g. after some corrections
in the original database).</p>
<p>I understand, that the blocklist is necessary to delete files
from the database only.</p>
<p>Is any of this worth to add a feature request / bug on
bugs.kde.org?</p>
<p>Cheers, Andreas</p>
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