tags make me crazy

[Maik Qualmann]

Which database are you using? I'm asking because of the problems with accented 
characters.

Another explanation of the tags: digiKam finds a tag X without a hierarchy in 
the uncleaned metadata of an image.
Where should digiKam assign it now, to A/A1/X or to B/B1/X. digiKam can't 
decide, so it creates the tag X in the root.
What would be the right solution for you?

Maik

Am Mittwoch, 11. Dezember 2024, 15:37:03 Mitteleuropäische Normalzeit schrieb 
Frédéric Da Vitoria:
> I finally managed to clean my tags.
> 
> Here is how I proceded: first, as Maik suggested, ensure there are no
> duplicates except at root level. Once this is done, simply delete the
> wrong tags from the root. If dK recreates a wrong root tag immediately
> after you delete it, it means that you missed a duplicate somewhere. I
> had found another way by dragging the wrong root tag to where it should
> be, thus triggering a merge, but I deduce from Maik's explanation this
> dK behaviour only triggers duplicates, so deleting a duplicate will
> always leave the original untouched, and simply deleting the wrong root
> tag is simpler than merging it.
> 
> Ensuring that there are no duplicates may not be easy, because there are
> situations where using the exact same name in different places is makes
> a lot of sense, but there is currently no way to get around this
> limitation in dK (at least not that I know of). For example, I had 2
> "piscine", one for our swimming pool, one as a general swimming pool
> tag. I had to rename one of those in order to ensure unicity.
> 
> I don't understand why dK does this. When I check A/A1/X in the UI, why
> can't dK simply do the same thing in the selected photos? I tell dK
> where tag X is, so why explore the full tags list? Why does it matter if
> there exists for example B/B1/X too? I guess such a complicated
> mechanism has been included deliberately, but I fail to see to what
> purpose. Note that dK does what I ask him to if I ask him to add a tag
> which is used in more than one place. In my example above, dK adds the
> tag A/A1/X to the selected photo. But it adds a tag X too which I did
> not as for. What for?
> 
> Here are some remarks:
> 
>  1. dK sometimes created duplicates not only at root level, but also in
>     intermediate levels. Those "intermediate" duplicates were always
>     somewhere in the path to a correctly placed tag.
>  2. the tags created by dK by duplication have a character coding issue.
>     I found that many (all?) the duplicated tags which contained
>     accentuated characters had those replaced with an inverted question
>     mark.
>  3. when selecting a group of photos and changing tags in a way which
>     affects only a subset of the selected photos, dK updates *all* the
>     selected photos, not only the subset; I feel this is both
>     unnecessary and wrong (nothing was changed in the selected photos
>     which weren't part of the subset). Example: photo1 has tags A and B
>     and photo2 has only tag A, I select both photo1 and photo2 and I
>     check tag B, dK updates both photo1 and photo2, when actually only
>     photo2 was really changed.
> 
> > Hello Maik,
> > 
> > my replies/questions below:
> > 
> > On 07/12/2024 19:21, Maik Qualmann wrote:
> >> Hi Frédéric,
> >> 
> >> I can't find any errors with these images.
> >> 
> >> The tag "piscine" is created by the image "piscine
> >> 20200311_092408_vHDR_Auto.jpg" in the root as a single tag.
> > 
> > Let me explain again, and expand at the same time:
> > - I don't want the "piscine" at the root level, only as a hierarchical tag
> > - the tag piscine has 2 "legit" positions: in Sujets/technique/piscine
> > and in Lieux|France|Charente Maritime|Le Mung|piscine.
> > - I did not create the tag "piscine" at root level. dK decided to
> > create it by itself (but you have explained below how and why this
> > happens).
> > - if I select "piscine 20200311_092408_vHDR_Auto.jpg " in the
> > thumbnails view and uncheck the root piscine, dK recreates it as soon
> > as I click on Apply. Again, I know now why, but I don't know how to
> > fix it.
> > 
> > Hmm, BTW, I just copied those 2 paths above from "piscine
> > 20200311_092408_vHDR_Auto.jpg", and I notice the difference in
> > separators. I guess this can't be good, but do you know any method to
> > fix this? I guess that many photos are affected by this...
> > 
> >> This is actually how it is shown in the metadata and can be easily
> >> corrected.> 
> > Well, the method may be easy, but I am unable to find it. Could you
> > explain?
> > 
> >> I don't have the tag "mésange bleue" in the root with this set of images.
> > 
> > It is there. Search for "sange" and you will find it :-) Obviously a
> > character encoding issue, but here again I don't know what to do about
> > it. This could be inherited from the photo tagging software I used
> > before, but I don't have it any more.
> > 
> >> Please note the following: you should always read an entry for tags in
> >> the
> >> advanced metadata that supports hierarchical tags. Either LR hierarchical
> >> tags or digikam TagsList.
> > 
> > For several years now, dK has been my only way of editing tags. The
> > only other graphical tools I use are Gimp and Hugin (and sometimes
> > RawTherapee or darktable) and AFAIK none of those know what a tag is.
> > I never used hierarchical tags before, hierarchical tags were one of
> > the reasons I chose dK. Currently, dK is set to Xmp.digiKam.TagsList.
> > Here are my tags settings:
> > 
> > Does Xmp.lr.hierarchicalSubject mean LR hierarchical tags? If so,
> > IIUC, I should uncheck this, correct?
> > 
> >> Please note the following: if an image has a single tag entry, digiKam
> >> tries to find the name in the digiKam tag tree. However, if this exists
> >> multiple times in different hierarchies, the tag logically cannot be
> >> assigned to one. In this case, the single tag is created in the root.
> > 
> > I guess this is the cause of the issue.
> > 
> > But how should I handle this? Should I ensure there aren't 2 different
> > tags at different places? How can I clean my tags even assuming I am
> > willing to replace Lieux|France|Charente Maritime|Le Mung|piscine with
> > Lieux|France|Charente Maritime|Le Mung|piscine_dv?
> > 
> > Is there a tool showing which tags are "duplicated"?
> > 
> > Shouldn't this dK behaviour be enhanced in the future? Imagine a tag
> > named "garden", there are bound to be many places in a hierarchy where
> > such a tag would be appropriate. And one would not necessarily be
> > willing to give a unique name to each "garden", because being able to
> > pull all the "garden" from all over the hierarchy could be meaningful.
> > 
> >> Maik
> >> 
> >> Am Samstag, 7. Dezember 2024, 10:13:51 Mitteleuropäische Normalzeit
> >> schrieb
> >> 
> >> Frédéric Da Vitoria:
> >>> Hello Maik,
> >>> 
> >>> Thank you for looking into this.
> >>> 
> >>> Here are 8 examples. I did not touch anything in them since the problem
> >>> occured except changing their file names, and I did so after copying
> >>> them into a directory outside of dK's scope. So these should exactly
> >>> what dK sees.
> >>> 
> >>> I included:
> >>> - 4 photos with the "piscine" tag, taken with 4 defferent cameras, each
> >>> time the "piscine" is duplicated
> >>> - 2 photos with a "mésange bleue" tag, one where this itag is duplicated
> >>> at the root level, one where there is only one copy of the tag; I did
> >>> not do anything recently with those old photos so I don't have any idea
> >>> why dK decided to duplicate those tags
> >>> - 2 photos with a "macaque à longue queue" tag, one where this itag is
> >>> duplicated, one where there is only one copy of the tag; I did not do
> >>> anything recently with those old photos so I don't have any idea why dK
> >>> decided to duplicate those tags either; here, dK duplicated tag under
> >>> "animal" instead of putting the duplicate in the root.
> >>> 
> >>> I noticed that the duplicated tags had character set issues (when there
> >>> were non-standard characters, of course).
> >>> 
> >>> Note that the problem occurs when I select a group of photos and edit
> >>> the tags by checking / unchecking the tags in the right pane. AFAICT,
> >>> this does not happen when I merge tags using "Tags" in the left pane. I
> >>> guess I should refrain from using the right pane to edit tags until this
> >>> issue is solved.
> >>> 
> >>> https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1K2Q9Nf0F-D5UEuVK8CqSX5SG_9P3eCsc
> >>> ?usp=sharing