New user experience

[Remco Viëtor]

On jeudi 4 janvier 2024 23:13:35 CET Ron wrote:
> Hi,  wow its been over 10 years since I ran a Mailman list server!  Sure
> wish you would convert to a FORUM system.

There is a "digikam" section on pixl.us:
https://discuss.pixls.us/c/software/digikam/26

> Just wanted to pass on a few things.  PLEASE in NO WAY consider this as
> criticism!!  I looked around and Digikam looks like it would fit my needs -
> photo management with lots of features and the ability to create a
> website.  I was using Rhotoalbum http://rhotoalbum.valibuk.net/ and I even
> wrote a perl/gtk script to easily let me view pics and add comments.
> 
> During setup the RAW options are not something I would need to see.  All my
> pics are jpeg's so I created a small album for year 2005.  It then indexed
> all the photos (350 pics in 9 folders).  So then I decided I would delete
> that album and change the location where the digikam maintains its db files
> so they werent in my pic folder.  I tried to delete the top album 2005 but
> that wasnt an option.  I tried to select the range of sub-albums but that
> wasnt possible. So I manually deleted the albums.  Then I found out that
> the actual pics had also been deleted.  Good thing I keep everything backed
> up.

Keep in mind that Digikam's "albums" are in fact disk directories, so any 
operation on albums acts as if you use a file manager...

> Before I did that I tried to change the comments on the folders.  Very
> tedious. I still am confused about comments vs tags. Although I was hoping
> I could easily apply a tag to all objects in a folder(album) and then
> besides the main album, have seperate pages linking to those say like
> trips, people, pets.

Basically, tags are labels within a restricted set (either formally defined or 
ad hoc), which allows them to be used for quick searching/filtering. They are 
not ment for normal display towards third parties. 
Comments (Captions) and titles are ment for public consumption, and are 
basically free text, which makes them less suited for filtering and searching.
Titles are usually a short (one-line) text, captions are longer and can give 
(many) more details and background information about an image.

> What I want is something that will NOT modify my original photos unless I
> approve any changes,  let me tag and add comments easily (I have 15k pics,
> 918 folders), generate a website creating scaled down pics and creating
> thumbs (HTML Gallery).  I will maintain where the photos live on the HD.

I think you can configure digikam to *not* write metadata to image files, but 
only to the database and (if wanted) sidecar files. I'd use sidecars in such a 
case, as a handy backup in case of migrations or use of other applications 
(where you want access to the metadata).

I'm not sure Digikam can do what you want for the html pages. I'm pretty sure 
it can't handle a full website (with all the navigation aids). It can generate 
individual html pages (see https://docs.digikam.org/en/post_processing/
html_gallery.html), but without any hyperlinks. 

I don't know if it's feasible to maintain a parallel directory tree (with hard 
or symbolic links) for use with Rhotoalbum, that depends on how many of those 
15k images are in your website, and how often pages change (adding a page is 
probably fairly easy).

> I read through the Digikam epub manual and am excited to spend more time
> with it.
> 
> Is there a dedicated viewer instead of having to load the main program?
No, not from the digikam team, afaik. I'ts also not what digikam is aimed at, 
it aims at handling a potentially large image collection, where images need to 
be easy to find and possibly edited individually.

I also wouln't want to use it on a publically accessible web server, which is 
much more prone to attacks (with possible data loss or corruption) than my 
private computer...
 
> Sorry for the long post,  I  just wanted to pass on my experience so far
> and see what people have to say :-)
> 
> -Ron