[Digikam-users] Off-line Collection Browsing & DB cleanup

[Nick Anderson]

Ive been using digikam for a while now. In general as a library 
management tool it works well for me. There are two functions that I 
don't understand.

Collections:
(I recently wiped out my digikam db and started fresh and have not 
re-connected my remote collections yet so perhaps this has changed.)

The notion of remote or removable collections. Both the thumbnails and 
the metadata are stored in the database correct? Whenever I launch 
digikam and my network collections are not available I cant use digikam 
to browse the disconnected collections. So in order to find an image I 
have to have that collection connected? Since all the information is 
available shouldn't I be able to search and browse the collection, but 
be given some message about attaching the collection before being able 
to view a full size image?

DB:
The reason I wiped out my db is because I rename and sort images with 
some custom scripts. At one point some images could no longer be found 
with digikam but they were inside the collections, and I did some db 
spelunking and saw they were there too, I also noticed references to 
files that I had moved outside of digikam. How do I "cleanup" that 
database cruft? Is that what "rebuild fingerprints" is for? It wasnt 
clear in the documentation what that function actually did.

I would appreciate any clarification and insight anyone can provide.