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Multiple album roots - what's the point?

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Chris Green

Multiple album roots - what's the point?

I though that the new facility of having multiple album roots in
0.10.x and 1.0.0 onwards would actually be useful but I *really* can't
see what difference it makes.

The albums *still* appear all in the same hierarchy. Surely what's
needed is a way to start digikam on different albums with no
conenction between them.

What I was hoping for was to be able to separate my collection of
pictures (as in photograhs I have taken) from my collection of scanned
documents - but I can't. I still see my documents album/folder when
I'm looking at my pictures and I still see my pictures album/folder
when I'm looking at my documents.

I want a way to tell digikam to start up either with 'this' hierarchy
of albums or with 'that' hierarchy of albums with no visibility of one
from the other.

--
Chris Green

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Anders Troberg

Re: Multiple album roots - what's the point?

Maybe you can't look at just one of them, but you should be able to separate them logically by making the hierarchy deeper. Example:

Instead of having:

Album_root_1/photofolder_1
Album_root_1/photofolder_2
...
Album_root_2/scanfolder_1
Album_root_2/scanfolder_2
...

you have:

Album_root_1/photos/photofolder_1
Album_root_1/photos/photofolder_2
...
Album_root_2/scans/scanfolder_1
Album_root_2/scans/scanfolder_2
...

That should put things in a nice hierarchy, somewhat like:

photos
photofolder_1
photofolder_2
...
scans
scanfolder_1
scanfolder_2
...

Is that close enough?

I've not tested this yet, so big disclaimer that I don't know for sure if it would give the desired result.

-----Ursprungligt meddelande-----
Från: Chris G [mailto:[hidden email]]
Skickat: den 3 september 2009 23:49
Till: [hidden email]
Ämne: [Digikam-users] Multiple album roots - what's the point?

I though that the new facility of having multiple album roots in 0.10.x and 1.0.0 onwards would actually be useful but I *really* can't see what difference it makes.

The albums *still* appear all in the same hierarchy. Surely what's needed is a way to start digikam on different albums with no conenction between them.

What I was hoping for was to be able to separate my collection of pictures (as in photograhs I have taken) from my collection of scanned documents - but I can't. I still see my documents album/folder when I'm looking at my pictures and I still see my pictures album/folder when I'm looking at my documents.

I want a way to tell digikam to start up either with 'this' hierarchy of albums or with 'that' hierarchy of albums with no visibility of one from the other.

--
Chris Green

_______________________________________________
Digikam-users mailing list
[hidden email]
https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/digikam-users

_______________________________________________
Digikam-users mailing list
[hidden email]
https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/digikam-users

Chris Green

Re: Multiple album roots - what's the point?

On Fri, Sep 04, 2009 at 12:30:11PM +0200, Anders Troberg wrote:

> Maybe you can't look at just one of them, but you should be able to separate them logically by making the hierarchy deeper. Example:
>
> Instead of having:
>
> Album_root_1/photofolder_1
> Album_root_1/photofolder_2
> ...
> Album_root_2/scanfolder_1
> Album_root_2/scanfolder_2
> ...
>
> you have:
>
> Album_root_1/photos/photofolder_1
> Album_root_1/photos/photofolder_2
> ...
> Album_root_2/scans/scanfolder_1
> Album_root_2/scans/scanfolder_2
> ...
>
> That should put things in a nice hierarchy, somewhat like:
>
> photos
> photofolder_1
> photofolder_2
> ...
> scans
> scanfolder_1
> scanfolder_2
> ...
>
> Is that close enough?
>

I could do that with the old digikam, nothing's new really.

As far as I can see the only change is that all the 'bits' (i.e.
albums) no longer have to be rooted at the same place.

What I want is the ability to be able to completely hide hierarchies
so they don't distract me from the current one. I.e. if I used your
example when I'm looking at photofolder_1 there is still a top-level
scans folder which is always there wasting some space in the sidebar.

In my case if I'm dealing with my 'pictures' album I don't want to
have to see the other bits and pieces I have, e.g. :-

forSale, Ebay, Freecycle, etc.
Document scans, etc.
Short term, temporary, etc.
...

As it is at present I'm *forced* to see these at the top level
alongside the albums which make up my 'Pictures', what I want to see
is just my year by year albums with no others wasting space.

> I've not tested this yet, so big disclaimer that I don't know for sure if it would give the desired result.
>
>
>
> -----Ursprungligt meddelande-----
> Från: Chris G [mailto:[hidden email]]
> Skickat: den 3 september 2009 23:49
> Till: [hidden email]
> Ämne: [Digikam-users] Multiple album roots - what's the point?
>
> I though that the new facility of having multiple album roots in 0.10.x and 1.0.0 onwards would actually be useful but I *really* can't see what difference it makes.
>
> The albums *still* appear all in the same hierarchy. Surely what's needed is a way to start digikam on different albums with no conenction between them.
>
> What I was hoping for was to be able to separate my collection of pictures (as in photograhs I have taken) from my collection of scanned documents - but I can't. I still see my documents album/folder when I'm looking at my pictures and I still see my pictures album/folder when I'm looking at my documents.
>
> I want a way to tell digikam to start up either with 'this' hierarchy of albums or with 'that' hierarchy of albums with no visibility of one from the other.
>
> --
> Chris Green
>
> _______________________________________________
> Digikam-users mailing list
> [hidden email]
> https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/digikam-users
>
> _______________________________________________
> Digikam-users mailing list
> [hidden email]
> https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/digikam-users
>

--
Chris Green

_______________________________________________
Digikam-users mailing list
[hidden email]
https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/digikam-users

Anders Troberg

Re: Multiple album roots - what's the point?

Ah, OK. For me, the multiple root is mostly a way to spread data over several disks, to avoid running out of space.

May I suggest that you get a bigger screen? :)

-----Ursprungligt meddelande-----
Från: Chris G [mailto:[hidden email]]
Skickat: den 4 september 2009 14:05
Till: [hidden email]
Ämne: Re: [Digikam-users] Multiple album roots - what's the point?

On Fri, Sep 04, 2009 at 12:30:11PM +0200, Anders Troberg wrote:

I could do that with the old digikam, nothing's new really.

As far as I can see the only change is that all the 'bits' (i.e.
albums) no longer have to be rooted at the same place.

What I want is the ability to be able to completely hide hierarchies so they don't distract me from the current one. I.e. if I used your example when I'm looking at photofolder_1 there is still a top-level scans folder which is always there wasting some space in the sidebar.

In my case if I'm dealing with my 'pictures' album I don't want to have to see the other bits and pieces I have, e.g. :-

forSale, Ebay, Freecycle, etc.
Document scans, etc.
Short term, temporary, etc.
...

As it is at present I'm *forced* to see these at the top level alongside the albums which make up my 'Pictures', what I want to see is just my year by year albums with no others wasting space.

--
Chris Green

_______________________________________________
Digikam-users mailing list
[hidden email]
https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/digikam-users

_______________________________________________
Digikam-users mailing list
[hidden email]
https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/digikam-users

Chris Green

Re: Multiple album roots - what's the point?

On Fri, Sep 04, 2009 at 02:37:59PM +0200, Anders Troberg wrote:
> Ah, OK. For me, the multiple root is mostly a way to spread data over several disks, to avoid running out of space.
>
I suppose it can do that but in this day and age of 1Tb disk drives
that isn't often necessary is it?

> May I suggest that you get a bigger screen? :)
>
My screen is quite big enough already! :-) It's a 20" running at
1600x1200.

It's not really the *space* occupied by those extra albums but the
messiness and distraction. Instead of just seeing the stuff I want
there are other bits which tend to appear at random because their
initial letters, not surprisingly, don't follow any useful logic.

Using directories/folders on my computer (rather than digikam) I'd
simply 'cd scans' and an 'ls' would just show me my scans albums with
no distraction. Similarly 'cd documents' and 'ls' would show me my
documents directories and nothing else. If I had web pages organised
in the same sort of hierarchy then I'd get the same sort of
separation.

It *can* be done with digikam by wrapping a script around the startup
and using multiple digikamrc files but it's a bit of a bodge and it
doesn't seem as if it would be difficult to build it into digikam.

All that's needed is a comamnd line option to set the root album path.

>
>
>
> -----Ursprungligt meddelande-----
> Från: Chris G [mailto:[hidden email]]
> Skickat: den 4 september 2009 14:05
> Till: [hidden email]
> Ämne: Re: [Digikam-users] Multiple album roots - what's the point?
>
> On Fri, Sep 04, 2009 at 12:30:11PM +0200, Anders Troberg wrote:
> > Maybe you can't look at just one of them, but you should be able to separate them logically by making the hierarchy deeper. Example:
> >
> > Instead of having:
> >
> > Album_root_1/photofolder_1
> > Album_root_1/photofolder_2
> > ...
> > Album_root_2/scanfolder_1
> > Album_root_2/scanfolder_2
> > ...
> >
> > you have:
> >
> > Album_root_1/photos/photofolder_1
> > Album_root_1/photos/photofolder_2
> > ...
> > Album_root_2/scans/scanfolder_1
> > Album_root_2/scans/scanfolder_2
> > ...
> >
> > That should put things in a nice hierarchy, somewhat like:
> >
> > photos
> > photofolder_1
> > photofolder_2
> > ...
> > scans
> > scanfolder_1
> > scanfolder_2
> > ...
> >
> > Is that close enough?
> >
> I could do that with the old digikam, nothing's new really.
>
> As far as I can see the only change is that all the 'bits' (i.e.
> albums) no longer have to be rooted at the same place.
>
> What I want is the ability to be able to completely hide hierarchies so they don't distract me from the current one. I.e. if I used your example when I'm looking at photofolder_1 there is still a top-level scans folder which is always there wasting some space in the sidebar.
>
>
> In my case if I'm dealing with my 'pictures' album I don't want to have to see the other bits and pieces I have, e.g. :-
>
> forSale, Ebay, Freecycle, etc.
> Document scans, etc.
> Short term, temporary, etc.
> ...
>
> As it is at present I'm *forced* to see these at the top level alongside the albums which make up my 'Pictures', what I want to see is just my year by year albums with no others wasting space.
>
> > I've not tested this yet, so big disclaimer that I don't know for sure if it would give the desired result.
> >
> >
> >
> > -----Ursprungligt meddelande-----
> > Från: Chris G [mailto:[hidden email]]
> > Skickat: den 3 september 2009 23:49
> > Till: [hidden email]
> > Ämne: [Digikam-users] Multiple album roots - what's the point?
> >
> > I though that the new facility of having multiple album roots in 0.10.x and 1.0.0 onwards would actually be useful but I *really* can't see what difference it makes.
> >
> > The albums *still* appear all in the same hierarchy. Surely what's needed is a way to start digikam on different albums with no conenction between them.
> >
> > What I was hoping for was to be able to separate my collection of pictures (as in photograhs I have taken) from my collection of scanned documents - but I can't. I still see my documents album/folder when I'm looking at my pictures and I still see my pictures album/folder when I'm looking at my documents.
> >
> > I want a way to tell digikam to start up either with 'this' hierarchy of albums or with 'that' hierarchy of albums with no visibility of one from the other.
> >
> > --
> > Chris Green
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Digikam-users mailing list
> > [hidden email]
> > https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/digikam-users
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Digikam-users mailing list
> > [hidden email]
> > https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/digikam-users
> >
>
> --
> Chris Green
>
> _______________________________________________
> Digikam-users mailing list
> [hidden email]
> https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/digikam-users
>
> _______________________________________________
> Digikam-users mailing list
> [hidden email]
> https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/digikam-users
>

--
Chris Green

_______________________________________________
Digikam-users mailing list
[hidden email]
https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/digikam-users

Geert Janssens

Re: Multiple album roots - what's the point?

On Friday 4 September 2009, Chris G wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 04, 2009 at 02:37:59PM +0200, Anders Troberg wrote:
> > Ah, OK. For me, the multiple root is mostly a way to spread data over
> > several disks, to avoid running out of space.
>
> I suppose it can do that but in this day and age of 1Tb disk drives
> that isn't often necessary is it?
>
I tend to disagree. In a networked environment the ability to have multiple
root albums is very useful. Not for lack of diskspace, but to setup multiple
image databases, and configure only some for different client machines.

> > May I suggest that you get a bigger screen? :)
>
> My screen is quite big enough already! :-) It's a 20" running at
> 1600x1200.
>
> It's not really the *space* occupied by those extra albums but the
> messiness and distraction. Instead of just seeing the stuff I want
> there are other bits which tend to appear at random because their
> initial letters, not surprisingly, don't follow any useful logic.
>

You are free to organise your top level directories in such a way that they do
exhibit a useful logic. You suggested in an earlier mail that you wanted to
see only directories from one year. Then organize your top-level directories
per year. I do agree this doesn't really map to all situations though.

> Using directories/folders on my computer (rather than digikam) I'd
> simply 'cd scans' and an 'ls' would just show me my scans albums with
> no distraction. Similarly 'cd documents' and 'ls' would show me my
> documents directories and nothing else. If I had web pages organised
> in the same sort of hierarchy then I'd get the same sort of
> separation.
>
I'm afraid it's no good comparing command line tools with gui's. They have
rather different working models. A closer comparison would be between Dolphin
and Digikam. You will see that both tools have a similar sidebars both showing
you all image directories that are in sight. Opening one image directory
doesn't hide the others.

The same goes for webpages. You can't compare that with Dolphin or Digikam.
The website designer fully decides on the layout, so there's no convention
there at all. The closest match I can imagine would be running firefox with
your bookmarks in the sidebar. Also there, you can't start firefox with a
different set of bookmarks depending on which website you wish to see.

> It *can* be done with digikam by wrapping a script around the startup
> and using multiple digikamrc files but it's a bit of a bodge and it
> doesn't seem as if it would be difficult to build it into digikam.
>
> All that's needed is a comamnd line option to set the root album path.
>
I think that looking at digikam as "an application" and a root album path as
"a object to open with digikam" is not quite the metaphor being used in
digikam. Digikam is more of an "image manager" like Dolphin is a more generic
"file manager". In this context, it doesn't really make sense to open a set of
files in a file manager, but not being able to navigate to the other files
available on the system, just because you don't need them in this session.

I'm not against your suggestion per se, though. However, I personally like
having all my images from different root album paths in one overview.

I think a more flexible solution would be to introduce "Album tags", similar
to the image tags that exist already, together with a way to filter the album
list based on these tags. Part of this work is probably already in digikam:
albums can be assigned a "Category", but there's no way to filter on this
categories.

Just my thoughts on this though...

Geert
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Digikam-users mailing list
[hidden email]
https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/digikam-users

Anders Troberg

Re: Multiple album roots - what's the point?

> I suppose it can do that but in this day and age of 1Tb disk drives
> that isn't often necessary is it?

Come back when the 4TB drives arrive, then it's not a problem for me. Then again, by then, I'll probably have more data anyway...

> However, I personally like having all my images from different root album paths in one overview.

I agree. I see it as a way to increase storage space and to organize, not to filter out content.

Hmm, perhaps a quick filter combo box in the the tool bar, which remembers previously used filters? Enter "scans" and it will only display the parts of the album that contains "scans" somewhere in the path/filename. That would also work as a quick-search. Perhaps that would be a quick-and-dirty solution? It would also fit nicely into the useage model of the "google generation".

It wouldn't be that much unlike the Search combo in Outlook (yeah, I'm ashamed, but they force me to use it at work).

-----Ursprungligt meddelande-----
Från: Geert Janssens [mailto:[hidden email]]
Skickat: den 4 september 2009 16:00
Till: [hidden email]
Ämne: Re: [Digikam-users] Multiple album roots - what's the point?

On Friday 4 September 2009, Chris G wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 04, 2009 at 02:37:59PM +0200, Anders Troberg wrote:
> > Ah, OK. For me, the multiple root is mostly a way to spread data
> > over several disks, to avoid running out of space.
>
> I suppose it can do that but in this day and age of 1Tb disk drives
> that isn't often necessary is it?
>
I tend to disagree. In a networked environment the ability to have multiple root albums is very useful. Not for lack of diskspace, but to setup multiple image databases, and configure only some for different client machines.

You are free to organise your top level directories in such a way that they do exhibit a useful logic. You suggested in an earlier mail that you wanted to see only directories from one year. Then organize your top-level directories per year. I do agree this doesn't really map to all situations though.

> Using directories/folders on my computer (rather than digikam) I'd
> simply 'cd scans' and an 'ls' would just show me my scans albums with
> no distraction. Similarly 'cd documents' and 'ls' would show me my
> documents directories and nothing else. If I had web pages organised
> in the same sort of hierarchy then I'd get the same sort of
> separation.
>
I'm afraid it's no good comparing command line tools with gui's. They have rather different working models. A closer comparison would be between Dolphin and Digikam. You will see that both tools have a similar sidebars both showing you all image directories that are in sight. Opening one image directory doesn't hide the others.

The same goes for webpages. You can't compare that with Dolphin or Digikam.
The website designer fully decides on the layout, so there's no convention there at all. The closest match I can imagine would be running firefox with your bookmarks in the sidebar. Also there, you can't start firefox with a different set of bookmarks depending on which website you wish to see.

> It *can* be done with digikam by wrapping a script around the startup
> and using multiple digikamrc files but it's a bit of a bodge and it
> doesn't seem as if it would be difficult to build it into digikam.
>
> All that's needed is a comamnd line option to set the root album path.
>
I think that looking at digikam as "an application" and a root album path as "a object to open with digikam" is not quite the metaphor being used in digikam. Digikam is more of an "image manager" like Dolphin is a more generic "file manager". In this context, it doesn't really make sense to open a set of files in a file manager, but not being able to navigate to the other files available on the system, just because you don't need them in this session.

I'm not against your suggestion per se, though. However, I personally like having all my images from different root album paths in one overview.

I think a more flexible solution would be to introduce "Album tags", similar to the image tags that exist already, together with a way to filter the album list based on these tags. Part of this work is probably already in digikam:
albums can be assigned a "Category", but there's no way to filter on this categories.

Just my thoughts on this though...

Geert
_______________________________________________
Digikam-users mailing list
[hidden email]
https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/digikam-users

_______________________________________________
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[hidden email]
https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/digikam-users

David Talmage-2

Re: Multiple album roots - what's the point?

In reply to this post by Chris Green

----- Original message -----
> ...
> What I was hoping for was to be able to separate my collection of
> pictures (as in photograhs I have taken) from my collection of scanned
> documents - but I can't. I still see my documents album/folder when
> I'm looking at my pictures and I still see my pictures album/folder
> when I'm looking at my documents.
> ...

This isn't exactly what you ask for but I think it will do what you want.

Use tags and a tag search to limit what you see. For example, tag your scans with "scan". Then use the tag search to show only things with the "scan" tag. With the search thingy showing, you won't see other albums.
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Chris Green

Re: Multiple album roots - what's the point?

In reply to this post by Anders Troberg

On Fri, Sep 04, 2009 at 04:29:43PM +0200, Anders Troberg wrote:

> > I suppose it can do that but in this day and age of 1Tb disk drives
> > that isn't often necessary is it?
>
> Come back when the 4TB drives arrive, then it's not a problem for me. Then again, by then, I'll probably have more data anyway...
>
> > However, I personally like having all my images from different root album paths in one overview.
>
> I agree. I see it as a way to increase storage space and to organize, not to filter out content.
>
> Hmm, perhaps a quick filter combo box in the the tool bar, which remembers previously used filters? Enter "scans" and it will only display the parts of the album that contains "scans" somewhere in the path/filename. That would also work as a quick-search. Perhaps that would be a quick-and-dirty solution? It would also fit nicely into the useage model of the "google generation".
>

Yes, a way of selectively hiding albums would do what I want, in fact
it would be better than ways I've suggested.

--
Chris Green

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Chris Green

Re: Multiple album roots - what's the point?

In reply to this post by David Talmage-2

On Fri, Sep 04, 2009 at 11:27:24AM -0400, David Talmage wrote:

>
> ----- Original message -----
> > ...
> > What I was hoping for was to be able to separate my collection of
> > pictures (as in photograhs I have taken) from my collection of scanned
> > documents - but I can't. I still see my documents album/folder when
> > I'm looking at my pictures and I still see my pictures album/folder
> > when I'm looking at my documents.
> > ...
>
> This isn't exactly what you ask for but I think it will do what you want.
>
> Use tags and a tag search to limit what you see. For example, tag your scans with "scan". Then use the tag search to show only things with the "scan" tag. With the search thingy showing, you won't see other albums.

Doesn't that lose my basic album/folder organisation though?

--
Chris Green

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David Talmage-2

Re: Multiple album roots - what's the point?

In reply to this post by Chris Green

----- Original message -----

> On Fri, Sep 04, 2009 at 11:27:24AM -0400, David Talmage wrote:
> >
> > ----- Original message -----
> > > ...
> > > What I was hoping for was to be able to separate my collection of
> > > pictures (as in photograhs I have taken) from my collection of scanned
> > > documents - but I can't. I still see my documents album/folder when
> > > I'm looking at my pictures and I still see my pictures album/folder
> > > when I'm looking at my documents.
> > > ...
> > ...
> > Use tags and a tag search to limit what you see. For example, tag your scans
> > ..
>
> Doesn't that lose my basic album/folder organisation though?

Try it and see. I'm away from my collection but I recall that the search maintains your album organization.

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