Some questions about tags and tagging

[Chris Green]

I'm a little confused about jbrout's tagging mechanism.

I have a lot of pictures already tagged that I have imported into
jbrout. It shows all their tags in a category called "Imported Tags"
which isn't really very useful as they're already categorised into a
hierarchy using / delimiters.

Is there any way I can get jbrout to recognise my existing (built into
the IPTC information) tag hierarchy?

As it is if one moves from jbrout to any other picture viewer one is
left with just the raw tags and no hierarchy at all. Apart from
anyhting else this could easily lose information - we had a dog called
Ruby and also a family member called Ruby. If the tag just says 'Ruby'
then you can't separate them but if the tag is 'Pets/Ruby' or
'Family/Ruby' it's easy.

--
Chris Green

[Matej Cepl]

On Sun, Sep 22, 2013 at 05:40:34PM +0100, Chris Green wrote:
> I have a lot of pictures already tagged that I have imported into
> jbrout. It shows all their tags in a category called "Imported Tags"
> which isn't really very useful as they're already categorised into a
> hierarchy using / delimiters.
>
> Is there any way I can get jbrout to recognise my existing (built into
> the IPTC information) tag hierarchy?

That's difficult question. jBrout was created originally with IPTC
standard in mind, and IPTC doesn't contain any provision for the
hierarchical tags. All current programs deal with the hierarchical tags
in some weird and usually proprietary way (i.e., either they create
their own "standard" or they follow such "standard" of some other
program). See for example http://redmine.yorba.org/issues/4050 for
explanation of the issue.

And yes, jBrout could be made to understand couple of these "standards"
and store in one of them, except it would require a lot of changes in
the UI part of the program (which I am completely not capable of doing).
Patches welcome! Very welcome.

Best,

Matěj

[Chris Green]

OK, thanks for the reply. I did do a bit of Googling about this and
realised that there isn't much of a standard way of doing it. So I
guess I just have to 'roll my own'.

--
Chris Green

[Matej Cepl]

On Mon, Sep 23, 2013 at 08:13:25AM +0100, Chris Green wrote:
>OK, thanks for the reply. I did do a bit of Googling about this and
>realised that there isn't much of a standard way of doing it. So I
>guess I just have to 'roll my own'.

Patches welcome! Truly, if you find some way how to deal with this mess,
I would gladly take patches.

Matěj

[Frederic Da Vitoria]

2013/9/22 Matej Cepl <mc...@redhat.com>

Why "in the UI"? jBrout already has hierarchical tags, doesn't it? So "all" that would have to be done is storing the hierarchy in the images themselves (XMP and IPTC or XMP alone) and reading it back from there. The only UI which could have to be done is giving the user the choice of the hierarchy storage method.

--
Frederic Da Vitoria
(davitof)

Membre de l'April - « promouvoir et défendre le logiciel libre » - http://www.april.org

[Chris Green]

On Mon, Sep 23, 2013 at 10:45:41AM +0200, Frederic Da Vitoria wrote:
> 2013/9/22 Matej Cepl <[1]mc...@redhat.com>

>
> On Sun, Sep 22, 2013 at 05:40:34PM +0100, Chris Green wrote:
>
> I have a lot of pictures already tagged that I have imported into
> jbrout. It shows all their tags in a category called "Imported Tags"
> which isn't really very useful as they're already categorised into a
> hierarchy using / delimiters.
>
> Is there any way I can get jbrout to recognise my existing (built into
> the IPTC information) tag hierarchy?
>
> That's difficult question. jBrout was created originally with IPTC
> standard in mind, and IPTC doesn't contain any provision for the
> hierarchical tags. All current programs deal with the hierarchical tags
> in some weird and usually proprietary way (i.e., either they create
> their own "standard" or they follow such "standard" of some other

> program). See for example [2]http://redmine.yorba.org/issues/4050 for

> explanation of the issue.
>
> And yes, jBrout could be made to understand couple of these "standards"
> and store in one of them, except it would require a lot of changes in
> the UI part of the program (which I am completely not capable of doing).
> Patches welcome! Very welcome.
>
> Why "in the UI"? jBrout already has hierarchical tags, doesn't it? So
> "all" that would have to be done is storing the hierarchy in the images
> themselves (XMP and IPTC or XMP alone) and reading it back from there. The
> only UI which could have to be done is giving the user the choice of the
> hierarchy storage method.

That's true, there is already jbrout's own (not in the picture files)
hierarchy. All it needs is a way to store that hierarchy, maybe allow
the user to specify what delimiter to use.

It *should* then be able to make it work with existing hierachical tags.
Mine simply use / delimiters, so I have tags like:-

People/Family/Sally
Animals/Pets/Ruby

If one tells jbrout to use / delimiters for *its* hierarchy then it
should recognise my existing tags without problems.

--
Chris Green

[Frederic Da Vitoria]

2013/9/23 Chris Green <c...@isbd.net>

Ah, this reminds me that although the UI part should be pretty simple, there are questions about how it should work:

- If jBrout finds Animals/Pets/Ruby in a picture (or the XMP equivalent), of course it should understand the hierarchy, but should it behave as if that picture had the Animals and Pets tags too? The answer is probably yes.

- how should jBrout handle conflicting hierarchies? This situation is possible, not everyone puts things in the same order and you could have a copy of a friends' photos with a hierarchy which conflicts with yours. For example, some users could put a pet in Family and another not. Should both hierarchies be kept (each picture would keep it's own hierarchy)? Should they be propagated any hierarchy found should be automatically propagated to all relevant pictures for example add Animals/Pets to all Pets images)? Or should jBrout ask what to do? Maybe jBrout would need a tool to handle hierarchies (analyze them, show discrepancies, propagate hierarchies to relevant pictures).

[Matej Cepl]

On Mon, Sep 23, 2013 at 10:45:41AM +0200, Frederic Da Vitoria wrote:

> Why "in the UI"? jBrout already has hierarchical tags, doesn't it?

No, it doesn't. It has just the two-level hierarchy category/tag. That's
something different then recursively (perhaps limited in depth) tag
hierarchy.

Matěj

[Matej Cepl]

On Mon, Sep 23, 2013 at 10:20:07AM +0100, Chris Green wrote:
>That's true, there is already jbrout's own (not in the picture files)
>hierarchy. All it needs is a way to store that hierarchy, maybe allow
>the user to specify what delimiter to use.

Provide a patch so that we can see what you mean. Maybe I am just dumb
(which I am in the UI area) not to see that limited two-level hierarchy
has more simple UI than the recursive (perhaps bounded) unlimited one.

Matěj

[Frederic Da Vitoria]

2013/9/23 Matej Cepl <mc...@redhat.com>

Two-level? jBrout allows to create a category inside a category. So that if you rename "category" to "tag" you get tag hierarchy. Or am I missing something?

[Rob Wallace]

Hi

jBrout does have a full tag hierarchy and  there is no limit in the code as to how deep the categories can be nested.  

The attached screen shot shows an example of this, including the possibility of having a tag and a category of the same name within a category.  

Regards

Rob

[Chris Green]

On Mon, Sep 23, 2013 at 11:35:18AM +0200, Frederic Da Vitoria wrote:
> It *should* then be able to make it work with existing hierachical tags.
> Mine simply use / delimiters, so I have tags like:-
>
> People/Family/Sally
> Animals/Pets/Ruby
>
> If one tells jbrout to use / delimiters for *its* hierarchy then it
> should recognise my existing tags without problems.
>
> Ah, this reminds me that although the UI part should be pretty simple,
> there are questions about how it should work:
>
> - If jBrout finds Animals/Pets/Ruby in a picture (or the XMP equivalent),
> of course it should understand the hierarchy, but should it behave as if
> that picture had the Animals and Pets tags too? The answer is probably
> yes.
>

The tag is actually "Animals/Pets/Ruby". In general I think when
searching (or filtering by) a given tag one expects to 'find' a picture
with "Animals/Pets/Ruby" as its tag when looking for 'Animals', 'Pets'
or 'Ruby'. In addition though I'd expect to be able to filter by
'Pets/Ruby' so that I can differentiate from 'Family/Ruby'.

> - how should jBrout handle conflicting hierarchies? This situation is
> possible, not everyone puts things in the same order and you could have a
> copy of a friends' photos with a hierarchy which conflicts with yours. For
> example, some users could put a pet in Family and another not. Should both
> hierarchies be kept (each picture would keep it's own hierarchy)? Should
> they be propagated any hierarchy found should be automatically propagated
> to all relevant pictures for example add Animals/Pets to all Pets images)?
> Or should jBrout ask what to do? Maybe jBrout would need a tool to handle
> hierarchies (analyze them, show discrepancies, propagate hierarchies to
> relevant pictures).

That's why I said the user needs to be able to specify the hierarchy
delimiter. The extra stuff like being able to show discrepancies and,
maybe help sort them out, would be nice but it's a luxury. Since my
pictures have been through a number of photo managers I have quite a few
messes to sort out.

--
Chris Green

[Chris Green]

... but the categories allow many levels, not just one. It's perfectly
possible in jbrout to specify:-

Tags
People
Family
Friends
Others
Animals
Pets
Zoo
Places
France
Paris
Germany

and so on. There doesn't seem to be any limit the the levels allowed.

--
Chris Green

[Matej Cepl]

On Mon, Sep 23, 2013 at 12:05:55PM +0200, Frederic Da Vitoria wrote:
> Two-level? jBrout allows to create a category inside a category. So
> that if you rename "category" to "tag" you get tag hierarchy. Or am
> I missing something?

Interesting. I don't have a working Xorg at hand ATM so I couldn't test
it. It's good. Maybe then something interesting can be done.

Would anybody file an issue for this at
https://code.google.com/p/jbrout/issues, please?

Best,

Matěj