[digiKam-users] Dynamic albums

[Ty Mayn]

dynamic album =worklist = virtual album=playlist= NotinADirectory
    The "dynamic album" thread can be seen in thread view of archive in
Early February2022
https://mail.kde.org/pipermail/digikam-users/2022-February/thread.html#33296
  Joshua raised the problem of how a given selection of  files can be
maintained without moving (or duplicating) them into a new directory.  In
the previous thread I had asked about a means to obtain a playlist from a
selection of files for the purpose of later feeding the playlist as an
input to Sideshow (Presentation has such an input option  but is weak on
display of overlaid metadata)
    My goal is to ask for an enhancement to digikam but I am unsure where
it fits in the 325 categories of bug work that Gilles has mapped out.
  I might place it in "Clipboard Useability" category, because a dynamic
album  should be like a list of symlinks sitting in a clipboard . It could
be a list filenames whose paths map to anywhere in the physical folders of
the digikam4 database.  Once output into a named file, this list of
symlinks  should be useful  only for the system on which digikam is
installed and  running.  Any dynamic album saved by name should be able to
be an input to digikam engines such as Slideshow  by way of instant loading
into the main window (where thumbnails usually represent the full image).
At present Presentations offer an input of a file list however I do not
know the format or origins  of such a list .
    Sorting manually:  It seems ordinary sorting of album contents tends to
be by date/time or by names which encapsulate a date/time string.
If "dynamic albums" are to support workflow, worklists, and arbitrary
design of sequential "playlists" then manual sorting is needed. The
established manual sort order should be toggled independent of the sort
order chosen for "real" physical albums which correspond to system
directories of files.
      IDigikam seems strong in search and sorting of files according to
metadata which becomes a "selection" . However there does not seem to be a
tool for persisting that  transient "selection into a temporary modifiable
worklist or "dynamic album"   .  The digikam interface seems founded on the
principle that  a physicial directory containing the target files must
exist to persist a  selection and the selection is edited  only in a visual
display of thumbnails and highlighting, not  list that is virtual.
        Once a selection is composed the RightCLick action menu contains 20
actions some of which overlap with "edit or"tools".  I dont find an action
to persist the selection as a virtual list of  files, residing anywhere in
the directory tree of the physical albums.  This includes mass tagging and
I suppose I will use a bold and special tag name for recovering selections.
        If  the tag engine is used to define a "dynamic album"  it would
seem wise to reserve the "DA" tags as  hidden from view in the ordinary tag
manager.  There also would need to be means to manage names of different
selections.  The concept of arbitrary manual sort order also would not be
provided by a tag because a tag allows inclusion in a list but not position
in a sequential list.
      Please comment if and how this needs to be an enhancement
Thanks for the tools of digikam developers and the help on this list
Ty Mayn
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