[Digikam-users] Question about RAW processing: ufraw files?

[Mikolaj Machowski]

On Monday 06 April 2009 01:15:12 gerlos wrote:
> I think that scripting and command line operation could be that
> "something" more that could do the difference between digiKam and picasa
> or other alternatives... that linux console thing, with scripting, could
> add a lot of features to our favourite photo managing software, don't
> you think?
>
> Maybe we should leave a door open to it, even if it isn't in the to do
> list at the moment...
>
> I hope I didn't write stupid things.

On one hand your wishes are sensible - for long time this was also my wish. 
But on the other hand new batch tool in 0.11 (svn trunk) looks very promising. 
Of course at the moment there is no complete functionality provided by all 
kipi/digikam plugins + ui is a bit rough (I plan to write more about this soon 
on devel list) but future looks really good.

There is other thing I still think would be nice addition to digiKam: easier 
cooperation from inside digiKam with other tools - also some console tools 
like ImageMagick.

Last but not least: apart from Gilles attitude to this solution I understand 
that Qt/KDE framework isn't really designed for headless (read: no-GUI) 
operation like you want to do. To do this for existing program would mean some 
awful hacks, big, big, really big code refactoring, etc. Without those - even 
when communicating by dbus would require start-up of GUI which defeats whole 
concept of command line tools.

Note that more extensive dbus interface - especially for metadata plugins - 
would make digiKam easier to use in some heavy duty environments with existing 
data structures (second thing I want to elaborate on devel list).

m.