[Digikam-devel] [Bug 231114] New: unused template fields overwrite existing used fields when applying template

[Gus Gustafson]

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=231114

           Summary: unused template fields overwrite existing used fields
                    when applying template
           Product: digikam
           Version: 1.0.0
          Platform: Ubuntu Packages
        OS/Version: Linux
            Status: UNCONFIRMED
          Severity: normal
          Priority: NOR
         Component: general
        AssignedTo: digikam-devel at kde.org
        ReportedBy: efelthauser at gmail.com


Version:           1.0.0 (using KDE 4.3.2)
OS:                Linux
Installed from:    Ubuntu Packages

Not sure if this is a bug or change request.

I use the metadata template to automatically fill a couple fields. However, I
do not use the template for setting the location fields, such as sublocation,
city, etc. In other words, those ones are left blank in the template.

However, I recently found that, after applying the template to a folder of
images, this caused all the data in those location fields to be deleted.

I think that if there is already data in a field, when you apply a template,
that data should not be touched unless the template has something different for
that field.  It is better to leave more information, which can always be
deleted later, than to delete information unexpectedly (at least, I did not
expect to happen.) Or, perhaps the best way is to allow user to choose, for
each field in template with null value, whether existing data will be removed.
So, maybe each field has a checkbox (that appears or becomes active when null
value is present) that you can check to "clear existing data?" or something.

Or, you can forget the checkbox and just let people clear fields on multiple
files once the sidebar metadata-edit feature (for fields other than comment) is
added, if that is something they need to do.

But I think it is bad to leave it deleting data.

Thanks for a great software.

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