[Digikam-devel] [digikam] [Bug 337688] New: Reading/writing of keyword-tags to jpg and xmp corrupts tag hierarchy, duplicate root tag

[Christian]

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=337688

            Bug ID: 337688
           Summary: Reading/writing of keyword-tags  to jpg and xmp
                    corrupts tag hierarchy, duplicate root tag
           Product: digikam
           Version: 4.1.0
          Platform: openSUSE RPMs
                OS: Linux
            Status: UNCONFIRMED
          Severity: major
          Priority: NOR
         Component: Tags
          Assignee: digikam-devel at kde.org
          Reporter: buitk14 at A1.net

OS / Release Details:
---------------------
Digikam/Kipi Plugins Release 4.1.0-11.1 (libkexiv2-11 4.11.5-298.11)
with and without MySQl DB (mariadb 5.5.33-2.2, libmysqlclient18 5.5.33-2.2)
(OS: OpenSuse 13.2 from BuildService KDE:Extra, Windows 8.1 from Installer)

Symptoms:
------------
Tag writing and reading destroys your tag-hierarchy metadata any time you use
digikam to write tags if you use a tag tree with subnodes (tag hierachy) !!
Digikam CRUD operations for tagging will duplicate tags and mess up the
hierarchy, if the "writing metadata to image" option is selected.

You will end up with multiple nested levels of _Digikam_root_tag_ hierarchies
with duplicate keywords (up to 8 times) in each level. A nightmare if you have
millions of tagged images.
If you try to consolidate the duplicates with digikam you will cause much more
damage.

Analysis:
------------
Five different behaviours (and bugs?) when writing tags:

- Create and write new tag embedded to jpg image  (iptc, xmp) -> worked well
before 4.1 if only a few tags are selected and the tag was created on the same
PC/DB ... after rereading all metadata this operation creates duplicate tag
hierarchy with new root tag on same level after rereading metadata.

- Set and write embedded tag, that was imported from jpg metadata before ->
messed up hierarchy position or duplicates entry on pre 4.1 version, now seems
to work for 4.1 under a single root tag, or on top level, but after rereading
metadata the hierarchy might be corrupted with duplicates as well.

- Set and write embedded tag, that was imported from xmp sidecar before -> will
have two or more nested root tags until you remove all duplicate root tags from
the xml file before the import (photoshop section). 
To Reproduce: write tags from a hierarchy to image, remove tags from db, import
the tags again and write tags - every time an additional nested root node is
added. For me this is at least a major bug.

- Set and write new tag with same name of tag somewhere else in the hierarchy
(very likely you run into this, because of the bug that causes recursivley
nested root tag) -> duplicates tags because another way of writing tags is used
(full path) - but reading these tags will not consolidate them with same tags
from other images without full name

- Set and write many tags to a jpg file (cannot be stored in IPTC section) ->
Digikam will write them to xmp xml-file with two or more nested root tags, next
import duplicates the hierarchy .. see above.

These situations do NOT produce consistent keyword-tags in the images (after
rereading metadata !). Each situation produces duplicate tags that are shown on
different levels of the tag tree, some in the same, some on top.

Background:
-------------
 I am tagging a very large image collection with digikam for a long time. After
a few tests with the tag manager I decided to clean up tags ... because till
4.0 there was no way to remove a tag from an image. In 4.1 there are three ways
to remove tags. Two of them do not act as CRUD operation - even if you remove
the tag and wrtie metadata to the file they will not be removed. The new
"remove tag from all images" functions causes massive damage on the tag
hierarchy in the images - so there is no option left to manage tags with
digikam 4.1.

Tagging whish list: 
--------------------
 a quick-link to the digiKam bug-list from the digikam site (and devel-blog)

 no digikam root tag whatsoever ... the user can create one if needed

 a single tagging mode with CRUD operations for image-metadata compatible with
photoshop/lightroom. For other tag sources just provide import operations, but
no write operations. These apps are toys. 

 a specific tagging mode: "database only" that will not touch any image (no
additional settings, just all or nothing)

 a single, consistent way to remove tags - from images/database only, see above

 import/export of tag hierarchies to xml files in tag manager
 all CRUD operations for image-metadata have to be consistent,
   or they will to be removed from the code -> there is already an entry
(whish) in the bug-list. PS/Lightroom format and xml would be great.

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