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

[Nick Anderson]

On 05/14/2012 05:26 AM, Jean-François Rabasse wrote:
>
> On Sun, 13 May 2012, Nick Anderson wrote:
>
>> Thanks for the response, it would be great if you could share your
>> scripts.
>
> No problem. I've attached the script I use to this e-mail, in case you
> or others would wish to play with it. It's really simple stuff,
> just get it, read it, try it, hack it to suit your personal usage.

Great, Ill take a look at it. I ended up writing a really simple bash 
script last night to do similar. Ill clean it up and share it if anyone 
else is interested.

>> Your workaround seems like it would work ok but generating all the
>> thumbnails and keeping them updated seems a pain.

> Well actually, I don't think there could be a definitive answer or
> workflow. Each individual, each of us, has her/his own way to work and
> own usage, and the best way to go is certainly empirical.

Yeah everyones work-flow is different and in general I don't think DK 
should hamper whatever work-flow you prefer. This comes up for me 
because I basically have two trees. An import tree where I am tagging 
and renaming thats located on my laptop. I do local edits on those files 
with ASP/Bibble. When I am done I put them into the processed tree which 
is stored on my NAS.

> An images bank would require a different model (from a database point
> of view), should support temporay off-line data, should also accomodate
> for permament off-line images (e.g. only known via a web URL), and many
> other things.
> Moving from one software model to another is a huge task, IMHO.

I would agree that moving from one model to another is a huge task, but 
to me it doesn't seem that it would be very hard to add the off-line 
browsing/searching since the thumbs and metadata are already stored 
separately from the picture. A bunch of functions would need to be 
disabled for those but basic searching and browsing shouldn't require a 
ton of work. It would be nice to support the permanent off-line paths as 
you suggest but that kind of feature doesn't already exist.

> Also, how many Digikam users get concerned with this off-line issue ?
> If we are only a few percent, I doubt this would be worth the task:-)

I agree if its a very small portion. Perhaps my own habits are tainting 
my perception. I have not used a desktop for nearly 7 years now. Higher 
end laptops have been powerful enough for me. In the last several years 
I have transitioned from monstrous spinning rust to smaller SSD drives 
in my laptops. They are usually a bit better on battery consumption and 
significantly faster. Of course they are smaller as well so if I had not 
been already for disk redundancy, I would have been moving images to 
some other storage location. I have been using a NAS for years, I 
imagine USB hard drives are still quite popular with the price point. I 
know several photographers who until recently had been burning DVDs.

It isn't a huge issue since I am using a NAS and I have all my pictures 
there. But just thinking about someone who has a large collection of 
DVDs or CDs trying to hunt down an image pains me. I suppose there is 
separate software to catalog an optical disc collection but it seems 
like DK already has all the needed stuff minus exposing it in the UI.