[Digikam-users] Re: Migrating to digiKam from Windows (story) - metadata issue

[Francis Corvin]

Martin,

I feel your pain, as a Windows user, and as someone who has tried to 
organise his metadata.

What you are describing is less a problem with digiKam than a problem 
inherent to IPTC and XMP. It is a shocking problem indeed and stems 
from the desire to use IPTC as something else than what it was meant 
to be (essentially tagging news photographs using rigidly controlled 
dictionaries). Let alone the fact that some loose interpretations of 
it have caused issues between difference pieces of software even 
before XMP was around.

XMP is just a shell to store whichever data structure you want. You 
could even store an IPTC model in XMP if you set your mind to it. But 
that just means it's easy for data models to proliferate without 
concern for compatibility, especially as people are lulled by a false 
sense that if everyone uses XMP, data becomes interchangeable... And 
then someone with enough critical mass starts to build his own 
standard over XMP. No need to name names...

Anyway, enough with ranting. In my (not so humble) view IPTC is best 
ignored by anyone who is not an English-only stock agency. And even 
then, if they are, hierarchical tags --- which IPTC does not support 
(utter stupidity) --- may force them to use something else.

Francis

At 2011-02-28 16:35, Martin Javorek wrote:

>The only (maybe) solution for me is:
>
>1) Forgot IPTC, have only XMP.
>2) Exchange headline with description in all my photos (exiftool is 
>a magic) to have comfortable entering headline in digiKam. When I 
>need to exchange them back in future, I can.
>3) When I'll be changing anything in my photos using another SW than 
>digiKam, I need to clear IPTC before (or create new IPTC copying 
>from valid XMP), not to confuse that software with broken characters 
>written by digiKam. This is not easy as I have 20K+ photos and I 
>must detect, which IPTC I will be repairing (not one by one, but 
>also not all at once).
>4) Stick with Linux version of digiKam as there are newer versions 
>and wider community for help.
>
>I love digiKam functions like lighttable or facetagging or XMP 
>sidecars (in 2.0, I'm looking forward to) and many others.
>
>But, a little bit complicated start and workflow, aren't they?