[Digikam-users] Sidecar files and Digikam

[Remco Viëtor]

On Monday 11 June 2012 18:22:21 Andrew Goodbody wrote:
> On 11/06/12 17:40, Willem Ferguson wrote:
> > Dear Dk enthusiasts,
> >
> > Is there not a strong case to be made for Dk reading the XMP files for
> > at least some of the other sofware? Compatibility with some of the major
> > image processing software packages, e.g. Darktable and Adobe would
> > increase the usefulness of Dk and draw many more users to use Dk.
> > Granted, Dk is KDE-based and (at least the 2 mentioned above) are not.
> > But I cannot see that this could be a major problem???
> >
> > Kind regards,
> > Willem Ferguson
> 
> The use of an application specific namespace in xmp sidecar files is a 
> huge nuisance. The ability to read other applications data where 
> appropriate seems a must to me. Writing data in a format that could be 
> read by as many other applications as possible is merely highly 
> desireable. Using a unique namespace just because everyone else does is 
> just exacerbating the problem and is not to be encouraged.

Have you looked at a Digikam XMP sidecar? I just did, and saw 8 lines in the 
'Digikam' namespace, the others were in other namespaces, and the information 
in the Digikam namespace seemed to be duplicated in the other namespaces.

So Digikam is *not* storing its information only in its private namespace...

But, the namespace inside the xmp file is one part of the problem. The other 
is the filename Digikam has to look for: 
dk uses <basename>.<rawextension>.XMP, if another program decides to use
<basename>.xmp, or something more exotic, that opens up a whole different can 
of worms.

Remco