[digiKam-users] Further question about saving metadata

[Remco Viëtor]

On jeudi 14 mai 2020 10:32:51 CEST Chris Green wrote:
> I've started a new thread to make things (a bit) clearer.
> 
> I've been thinking about all this and it raises another quite serious
> question unless I'm completely misunderstanding things.
> 
> I'm told that if I tick all the boxes under "Write This Information to
> the Metadata" section of Dokuwiki's configuration settings then my
> metadata will be written to the (image) files.
That seems logical. More precisely, changes for selected files will be written 
on request, or when selecting another image/album. For now, let's forget about 
lazy updates.

> In that case what does the option "Write Metadata to Files" in the
> Album menu do?
What it says on the box: it writes metadata to the files from the database 
right now.

> If ticking the boxes in the Metadata configuration means that the data
> is always written to the files then what does the menu option do? Does
> it just repeat the writing of the data?  Or does the data *only* get
> written when you click the menu option with the Metadata configuration
> settings just saying *which* metadata gets written when you click on
> the Menu option?
Have you even done some minimal checking? I've never had to use those menu 
items, *unless* a file hade been changed outside digikam. That shouldn't  
happen in my workflow, but mistakes happen (I have checking for changes on 
startup activated). In all other cases I've checked, metadata were kept 
synchronised between database and files (including sidecars). 

> Alternatively does clicking the Menu "Write Metadata to Files" option
> write all (or some, if so which?) metadata to file regardless of the
> Metadata configuration settings?
See above... 
> 
> If you think carefully about this I think you will see where the
> confusion is that has troubled me for so long.

There is only confusion if you want to see things as more complicated than 
written. That something is possible doesn't mean it's always needed, nor does 
the presence of a manual option invalidate automatic updates. But if the 
manual options are not available when they are needed, you have a *real* 
problem...

You seem to think that the presence of commands to write metadata should 
preclude automatic updates to file metadata. That's said nowhere in the 
documentation, afaik, and in use it's easy to show that metadata *are* written 
to file immediately, including to side cars. (unless lazy writing is 
activated, but I do not use that, my system is fast enough that I don't need 
it).