Tellico Image Data Storage

[Robby Stephenson]

Hi James,

On 06/10/2017 04:44 PM, JAMES IRVING wrote:
> I need help understanding image storage options in Tellico.

Sure.

> FYI three computers involved, two have Ubuntu MATE 16.04 using KDE 
> Environment Platform 4.14.16 but one computer has Tellico 2.3.10+git 
> installed and the other is has Tellico 2.3.11+git installed; third 
> computer runs Linux Mint 17.3 MATE with KDE Platform 4.14.2 and Tellico 
> version 2.3.11.

The image management code hasn't changed in several versions, so there 
shouldn't be any issues mixing data files from multiple machines or even 
between Tellico 2.x and Tellico 3.x.

> My basic question is - what option is recommended for sharing 
> collections and I want the images shared too?  What number of entries 
> (with images) is considered large enough to impact performance?  My 
> collections open just fine, no noticeable delay.

One suggestion would be to switch to saving the images within the data 
file itself (on all 3 machines) and continue to use that until the 
performance suffers enough for you to actually notice it.

Based on your description of the scenario, having the images saved 
within a folder location relative to the data file should work. WIthin 
Tellico, whatever the file name, Tellico strips the .tc suffix and add 
_files to that name, as you've noticed.

The best way to provide transition to that working configuration is to 
export your collection using the "File -> Export -> Export to Zip" 
option. Contrary to the menu item text, this command creates a .tc data 
file that includes all the images. In other words, it's a quick way to 
save all the images within the data file without having to change your 
image saving configuration.

So export to a Zip for each of your three collections (Books, CDs, and 
Videos), save those data files within your Collaboration folder, make 
sure your configuration is set to save images relative to the data file 
and then open those data files. Once you save them again, Tellico should 
create the appropriate _files directory and the size of the data file 
will significantly decrease as the images are moved out of it into the 
folder.

 > I'm confused - Please advise
 >

> My original Video collection has 1008 entries and every entry has an 
> image associated with it.  Tellico was configured when that collection 
> was created to store images on that computer (Tellico 2.3.10+git) in the 
> option for using a directory associated with the application; I found 
> the images for all three collections in the folder: 
> ~/.kde/share/apps/tellico/data/.  There are 1,212 images in that file.

Right, it's not surprising that there are more images than entries in 
that situation. If you edited the images, or done online searches and 
had temporary collections, all the images are all saved together. That's 
why the "Export to Zip" option is the cleanest path - it only includes 
images connected to entries in the collection.

> One of the other computers is configured to store images in the data 
> file, and because (I'm assuming here) the shared data file from other 
> computer does not have the images in the data file - no images appear.

That makes sense.

> While my Videos collection was open in Tellico, I changed the setting on 
> one computer to use the image storage option to /store images in a 
> directory relative to the data file/.  That caused the creation of a 
> directory named "Videos_files" and upon saving the collection it stored 
> 984 images (not all 1,008).

I'm not sure why the difference in counts. You might have duplicate 
images, or some entries might no actually have an image?

   Then I opened the other two collections
> with that setting of where to store images and no additional images were 
> saved.  Because Tellico created the directory named "Videos_file" I 
> expected it to create directories for the other two collections or 
> combine the images into a single directory.

A Books.tc file will have a Books_files/ directory, a Videos.tc file 
will have a Videos_file/ directory, etc.

> The Tellico Handbook document does not explain the Image Storage Options 
> - that might be something to improve when that document is next updated.

Good point. I'll work on that.

Hope that helps!
Robby