[Digikam-users] (no subject)

[Elle Stone]

Dear Digikam users,

I have a problem and I'm hoping someone here can help.

I have about 9000 images in an IMatch database, running on windows in
a VirtualBox. I've been putting off transferring my categorization
efforts over to Digikam, but IMatch isn't running as well as it used
to in the VirtualBox - an understatement.

If it is relevant, I'm running Digikam 10.4 on Ubuntu Lucid using
icewm as the window manager, with a mix of gnome, kde, and other apps.

I have hierarchical categories/tags in IMatch. IMatch can write IPTC
and XMP to the image file itself or to a side-car. About half of my
images are jpegs. The rest are raw (CR2) files. IMatch can write to
both raw and jpeg, but writing to the raw files is very, very, very
slow.

I made a test run with some jpegs, using an IMatch script to write the
keywords to the IPTC keywords field. Digikam  doesn't import the
dotted keywords from the IPTC keywords field as tags - the dotted
keywords just get ignored, though they are visible in the Digikam IPTC
window.

 I am going to ask the IMatch forum for advice on how to get the tag
hierarchy from the IMatch database into the images, but I'm not quite
sure where the keywords need to go for Digikam to be able to import
them as tags. There is a script that rights to the lightroom subject
field, but that probably won't help. The scripts available to me in
IMatch use dotted notation to indicate a hierarchy, though perhaps a
kind soul on the IMatch forum could help me modify a script to output
forward-slash notation, if necessary.

I think the tags ought to go in xmp subject field? digikam tag field?
someplace else? slash? dot? Is there a way to get Digikam to read
dotted keywords from IPTC keywords?

I know this is a very dry subject for someone not in my predicament.
But trying to get this project done has actually reduced me to tears.
Any advice, help, inspiration is much appreciated. I have some
familiarity with exiftool at the command line, if that will help.

Many, many thanks in advance,
Elle Stone