[KPhotoAlbum] A few stacking issues

[Robert Krawitz]

On Fri, 25 Jan 2013 00:48:50 +0100, Johannes Zarl wrote:
> On Monday 21 January 2013 01:06:55 Robert Krawitz wrote:
>> [...]
> Not talking about the autostack problems for now, becaue I have not used it much, yet.
>
>> 3) If I export from a selection of stacked images, sometimes I get the
>>    JPEG and sometimes I get the RAW image.
>> 
>>    I've found three ways to guarantee export of only JPEG or only RAW
>>    files, but they're all clunky:
>> 
>>    * Expand all stacks and manually select the RAW or JPEG files, and
>>      export them.
>> 
>>    * Unstack the images, Remove Image from Stack, and in the search box,
>>      search for *.jpg (or *.cr2), perform the export, and then repeat
>>      the Automatically Stack Images (having to go through the whole
>>      rigamarole of changing the options).
>> 
>>    * Expand all stacks, export all the files, and then rm -f the ones I
>>      don't want.
>
> I would assume that the export takes the top-image from each stack and
> exports this, regardless of its file-type. So the stacks where the raw
> file is exported should be the ones with the raw image on top. Could
> you check your stacks and tell me if that is the case?

I have no reason to think that that isn't the case, but that doesn't
make the behavior more useful.

>> Export itself has some issues:
>> 
>> 1) The default is always manually copy next to .kim file (which seems
>>    like the least useful option).  I don't see the point of this at all;
>>    it really amounts to "don't copy files", which would be a more
>>    obvious name.
>
> You are right "Create .kim file without images" or "Only export
> metadata to .kim file" would probably be easier to grok. IMO
> "Automatically copy images next to the .kim file" would be a more
> intuitive default, but others may have a different opinion. Maybe you
> could file a wishlist item for that dialog to remember the last
> setting. That way everyone should (after the first export) get his/her
> favorite setting. I can't guarantee you, though, that this will be
> changed anytime soon.

OK.

>> 2) The default is always to generate thumbnails, which I don't want.
>
> Same as above. File a wishlist item for that dialog.

OK.

>> 3) I'd like a way to suppress generation of the .kim file altogether.  I
>>    normally use file export to pull a bunch of files out of the tree to
>>    do something with them (edit, upload, what have you) outside of kpa.
>
> Maybe I don't see the big picture here. If you don't need the .kim
> file, then why don't you just drag&drop the selection into a dolphin
> window?

Because I don't like drag and drop for this purpose.  Also, my KPA is
always full screen, and popping a dolphin/konqueror window over it isn't
very convenient.

>> 4) One potentially useful function, which I'm not sure whether would
>>    work, would be to export a .kim file, and then import it into another
>>    instance of kpa, merging (or overwriting) metadata from one instance
>>    to the other.  The use case is that I usually run kpa on my laptop,
>>    and do all my image tagging there.  I'd like to be able to export the
>>    tags (but not the images, which I copy by other means) to my server,
>>    so that I could shadow the database there.
>
> That should already work. Testing this by first manually adding some
> image files to the demo-database and then importing a matching .kim
> file, I get a dialog asking me how I'd like to merge the image data
> (see attached screenshot).

I'll try it.
-- 
Robert Krawitz                                     <rlk at alum.mit.edu>

MIT VI-3 1987 - Congratulations MIT Engineers men's hoops Final Four!
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