[KPhotoAlbum] KPA & continuity - life after us..

[Johannes Zarl-Zierl]

Hi,

[Disclaimer: I'm slowly wading through my email backlog, please be patient]

On Donnerstag, 29. Dezember 2016 21:57:08 CET Risto H. Kurppa wrote:
> If something happens to me - how will my family be able to find the images?
> The files can be found on backup disks. I've marked the backup USB drives
> with "ext3/4" on permanent marker :D so an ext3/4 reader for Windows should
> do the trick. But to get to KPA tags etc ie. setting up KPA & Linux/stuff
> will be much more harder and unlike to happen.
> 
> One thouhgt I had was to store the tags as EXIF/IPTC on the files to allow
> them to be read with any program existing decades later, if the hardware
> interfaces & ext fs is still known (and JPG & RAW formats...)

Last time I checked, EXIF/IPTC is not well equipped to carry this kind of 
information.

>From a pure data preservation standpoint, the pseudo-xml format we currently 
use should be parseable for a Long Time(tm). While this is nice for a 
professional archival entity, it won't help your family after you've passed 
on.

> Has anyone of you thought this somehow? How will your photos be used after
> you're gone?

I have thought about this a little, but not that much. In my family, I'm the 
only one tagging my images in any way. If I'm gone, my family will probably 
search photos the old way.



Btw. you don't have to die to make this a valid use-case. If several people in 
the family use photo management software, how can they exchange data?

If we cannot put the info into EXIF/XMP/IPTC, could we put it into a side-car 
file?

If a consensus could be reached (maybe as open-desktop standard?), importing/
exporting tags to side-car files or similar is something I definitely would 
want to support.

Cheers,
  Johannes

P.S.: For digikam/kphotoalbum, this may also be tackled using a kipi plugin 
(although the kipi api seems to get less and less usable over time...)