[Digikam-users] Templates: ITPC subject code

[Jean-François Rabasse]

> Subject: [Digikam-users] Templates: ITPC subject code

Hello Jürgen,

On Wed, 27 Mar 2013, H. Jürgen Karbach wrote:

> Trying to use ITPC subject code, I'm wondering about its
> appearance. Why is there only a search by numbers / code?
> It's like searching a phone connection by number,
> having only an idea on the name.
>
>    * At least a code/name-combined dropdown field should
>    be more helpful
>    and will increase the usage / acceptance of this
>    feature.

Well, it would be a *huge* multi levels drop-down menu
because the IPTC controlled vocabulary is quite large and
codes are structured by digits fields. The Digikam templates
dialog shows the human readable translation, e.g. if you
select code 08000000 you get the Name « human interest » .

If you select the subcode 08003000, you get same Name plus
Matter, « people » , and if you select the subsubcode
08003002, you get the extra Detail « celebrity » .

Roughly, it's the same as using structured tags, composite
code 08003002 means : Human interest/People/Celebrity.

I agree the GUI isn't that convenient because you need to
select codes to see the meaning. A help is to have, in
another window, a full list of codes with their meaning.
For example, you can open a web browser and display this
page : http://xml.coverpages.org/NITF30-subject-codes.html
Scrolling the page will help you selecting a category,
a subcategory, the final code.
But, true, that's not great.

Anyway (and this is my personal opinion only ! ) I think
this is a bit useless in a software like Digikam. The first
reason is that the IPTC codes have been designed for Press
agencies, and the vocabulary relates to press photos
content, stored in agencies images banks. Not everybody
holding a camera is a professional press reporter and many
other people may wish to use different vocabularies.
Digikam is a software for photo hobbyists, not to manage a
press images bank, and controlled vocabularies, as the IPTC,
relate to one professional area, nothing more.

Professional reporters have the tools to feed their agency
database with their works, usually the corporate database
interface with these tags structure.

>    * Is somewhere an extended set of ITPC subject codes?

No extended set because IPTC subject codes are a controlled
vocabulary, i.e. the list is fixed and under management.
It's not a managed vocabulary where you can add your
personal extensions.

>    * How to import in digiKam?

Hem, I'm not sure of what you mean with « import » ?
I am not a IPTC user, having my personal managed vocabulary,
but I think it could be possible (and more comfortable) to
work with the Digikam structured tags, as I said above :
Human interest/People/Celebrity and thus get the IPTC
subjects under a more readable and flexible way.

Regards,
Jean-François