[Digikam-users] Smart tags

[Sherwood Botsford]

One of the things I'm finding is that once you get around a hundred tags it
starts getting tricky to enter, certainly time consuming.  

I'm also finding that the more meta-data I attach to a picture the better I can
understand it (or find it) later.

I can see merit in having typed tags instead of moused tags.

E.g. I keep a plant database.

I'd like to have a single box with "Species" that I could enter.  It would work
as a combo box, so I could either do it as a drop down, or start typing which
would restrict the contents of the drop down, or could auto complete with tab
like directories do.  If I entered something new, it would ask where in the tag
hierarchy it should go. (It needs to know that pines and larches and firs are
all conifers so that when I search for conifers I see the right ones.

I'd also like it to be able to do aliases.  E.g. I should be able to type "Pine"
or Pinus.  Lodgepole or "Pinus contorta var. latifolia"  This could also allow
me to create speed tags "Pn cont"

Season to me is not defined in astronomical terms. For me there is Winter, Melt,
Mud, Spring (things getting green) Summer, Harvest (late summer, early fall)
Autumn (leaves changing) Fall (leaves gone, but no snow) Freeze-up 

So season is a 10-12 element dropdown box.

Now sometimes a picture is of more than one thing.  E.g. a landscaping picture
with blue spruce alternating with swedish aspen.  To accomodate this the
dropdown box has to allow multi-select.  For typing, you would need a symbol to
mean add another value to the keyword.  So for this pic, I'd have to type
Pic<tab>{completes to Picea} pun<tab>{completes to pungens} ++ {I want to add
another value for this keyword)Pop<tab>trem<tab> {box comes up asking "tremula
or tremuloides" I choose the latter} v. erecta

Or I type swedish<tab> it completes to swedish aspen, then enters the other into
the value.


It's not just plants of course.  Car nuts would want to be able to speed type
Malibu or Mustang, and have the appropriate tag(s) set.

You're at a family reunion.  Again you want a hierarchy of tags.
After the reunion you have to tag all the pix with whose in them.
LOTS of multivalue keywords here.

I can see that tag trees may be specific to a collection.  My plant tags aren't
useful to me when doing the family reunion.  The cousin tags don't help me with
 trees.  So I associate the cousin tag tree with the Family collection, and the
plant tag tree with the Tree Farm collection.