[KPhotoAlbum] [Bug 136955] image files are imported by filename only, not by filetype

[kpabugs at willden.org]

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http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=136955         
shawn-kde willden org changed:

           What    |Removed                     |Added
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             Status|UNCONFIRMED                 |NEW
      everconfirmed|0                           |1



------- Additional Comments From shawn-kde willden org  2007-05-11 15:41 -------
Falk, in case you're not on the mailing list, your patch is being discussed there.  There is a concern about the performance implications of doing the MIME-based examination, which will require reading at least the first part of each file being scanned.

Jesper proposed a modification that first checks the file name and only bothers to check the MIME type if the file name check doesn't identify the file as an image.  That helps, but it's not enough because some users have lots of files (tens of thousands) in their image directories that should live with the image files but should not be organized by kphotoalbum.   At present that's not an issue, because KPA looks only at the file names to determine that the files should be ignored.  With a MIME-based type check, those files would be opened and read during every KPA startup.  We're constantly fighting to reduce KPA startup time, because it's already pretty costly.

What might allow MIME-based lookups to be used is some mechanism that tracks files to be excluded from KPA.  Then, KPA could test each filename it finds against that list and only do the MIME lookup if the file isn't excluded.  If the MIME analysis determines that the file is not an image, then perhaps that filename could be added to the exclusion list so it won't be examined again -- or maybe the exclusion list handling should be manual.

Finally, it's questionable whether or not it's worth so much effort just so users don't have to use standard file extensions.

If you have something to add to the discussion, respond here or, better yet, on the mailing list.