[Digikam-users] Technical newbie questions

[Caulier Gilles]

Le Samedi 27 Mai 2006 08:36 AM, Duncan Hill a écrit :
> Henning Spruth wrote:
> > 1. In essence, digikam manages image files in a directory structure under
> > its "Album Library Path".
>
> Correct.
>
> > 2. An album is identical to a directory below the album library path. Any
> > change to the album hierarchy in digikam is directly reflected to a
> > change in directory structure.
>
> Yes, but don't change the structure outside of digikam.  The properties,
> tags etc are based on file path, so moving them without digikam doing it
> means that the image counts as a 'deleted' image, and it then picked up
> new.  There's a bugs.kde.org entry on solving this.

Excepted that some Albums properties are stored in database.

>
> > 3. When adding images or importing folders, the images are copied into
> > the album library path.
>
> Pretty much.
>
> > 4. A central function of digikam is to maintain an index of the files in
> > the album library and the image properties (tags etc.) in its sqlite
> > database.
>
> Pretty much.  There's also the showfoto application (part of the
> package) that does image manipulation.
>
> > 5. Thumbnails for the album view are not stored on disk, but always
> > generated on the fly.
>
> IIRC, digiKam uses the KDE thumbnail system, which caches thumbnails
> based on md5 signature or md5 digest of name or similar.

No Henning. The files are stored in hdd to your ~./thumbnails folder. It 
shared between digiKam and konqueror. Nota : i have a patch to fix the 
problem about wrong rotated thumbs generated by konqueror (JensB if you read 
this message (:=))))

>
> > 6. When setting the "album library path" to an existing directory
> > structure containing images in a hierarchy, it will scan the structure
> > and recognize the existing levels as albums. It will not modify the
> > directory structure except for creating a digikam3.db at its root.

Yes to stores metadata unsupported by image file formats and albums.

Gilles