Opening xnview *browser* with a list of files

[Guest]

Hello,

I have searched through the forums and I can not find this discussed anywhere:

Is there a way to open xnview from a command line with a list of files that it will open in the *browser* (as thumbnails); i.e. not one per view page. This would be similar to *browsing* the results of a search.

The intention is that I might want to do complicated searches outside of xnview and then pass the filelist to xnview for browsing.

Does this exist? If not, would this be a desirable feature? (Pass the list on the command line or as a text file, one path/filename per line).

thanks
--
Ray

[xnview]

Currently no such option, but i can add it

[bugmenot]

doesn't sound like a job for a viewer

"pass the filelist to xnview" then it should open a viewer with the files

not sure of any use for this

[rs2009]

Hello,

Thanks for the quick response.

The "use" for this features would be to be able to use xnview as a browser for an arbitrary collection of photo files with all of its great features at my disposal.

An example:

I do a search (outside of xnview) to find pictures throughout my photofiles of "John and Paul without George" (based on say categories or IPTC tags or anything else).

I end up with a list of say 50 photos that I would like to review to find the best one. I use xnview features to browse this list, compare, crop etc just as if I had done the search in xnview and used the "Browse Results" option.

The above example, is the specific reason for my interest, but I think there would be other uses as well. XnView could add an option to save search results in a similar text file, so just pass the same text file to XnView instead of repeating the search (which could be slow).

Bugmenot: If I understand your comment correctly, you are suggesting that I could just pass the list of files to XnView right now and it would open them in viewer mode? This list might be long enough to exceed a reasonable command line length. And for quick and easy scanning, the browser mode would be better than viewers. Did I understand correctly?

thanks
--
Ray

[rs2009]

Hi,

A related suggestion:

Browsing the (e.g.) filelist.txt pics does not have to be command line based, it could/should(?) also be available as via menu File > Browse Filelist or similar.

--
Ray

[helmut]

Browsing the (e.g.) filelist.txt pics does not have to be command line based, it could/should(?) also be available as via menu File > Browse Filelist or similar.

Such functionality sounds a bit specialized to me. Please describe the use case a bit so that we understand what this type of browsing is for. This helps to understand and perhaps to find other/better solutions.

[JohnFredC]

This is an innovation that I would probably use frequently. Think of it as a variation of the image basket concept.

The user could select a few files in a file manager and XnView would display them in a temp category|virtual folder from which one could quickly perform a slide show, assign keywords, etc.

Until XnView has dual side-by-side browsers (perhaps never), I will still find myself doing file management in a commander tool and switching back and forth between it and XnView.

[marsh]

The "use" for this features would be to be able to use xnview as a browser for an arbitrary collection of photo files with all of its great features at my disposal.

Exporting 1 file from file manager= start viewer, but 2 or more files= browser?

[rs2009]

Hi,

OK. Here is the use case:

I have a database of several thousand photos. They are all tagged with categories. I would like to find a photo of my son and daughter together, but without mom or dad.

I can not do this kind of complex boolean search within XnView. (Hard to find this kind of feature anywhere I think).

However, it is not too difficult to do an SQLite3 query right on the category.db file and (very quickly) get a list of 254 files that meets this criteria and dump it into a text file (see below).

Now I would like to open all of these photos in XnView in browser mode to scan through them and pick the one that I like the best. I could pass the filelist.txt file to XnView on the command line, or I could do it via a File > Browse Filelist menu option. Both are valuable methods I think.

For my case, I do not want to manually select photos in a file manager, I want a computer generated list of photo files. However, once the list has been defined, then it is similar to the "virtual image basket" concept that JohnFredC described.

Is there a better way to do this sort of thing?


filelist.txt (excerp):
-----------

Code: Select all

P:\Ray\Photobase\2005\200507\20050725\X20050725_0003_GondolaKids.JPG   
P:\Ray\Photobase\2005\200507\20050729\A20050729_0197.jpg
P:\Ray\Photobase\2006\200605\20060519\X700_walking_away.jpg             
P:\Ray\Photobase\2006\200605\20060520\A20060520_0303.jpg
P:\Ray\Photobase\2007\200707\20070701\M20070701_2126_PL.JPG             
P:\Ray\Photobase\2007\200707\20070714\E20070714_1496a.JPG               
P:\Ray\Photobase\2007\200707\20070721\E20070721_1538.JPG                                               
P:\Ray\Photobase\2008\200808\20080828\E20080828_5560.JPG               
P:\Ray\Photobase\2008\200808\20080828\E20080828_5561.JPG               
P:\Ray\Photobase\2008\200808\20080828\E20080828_5562.JPG               
P:\Ray\Photobase\2008\200808\20080828\E20080828_5565.JPG               
P:\Ray\Photobase\2008\200808\20080828\E20080828_5566.JPG               
P:\Ray\Photobase\2008\200809\20080907\E20080907_5585.JPG               
P:\Ray\Photobase\2008\200809\20080907\E20080907_5590.JPG               
P:\Ray\Photobase\2008\200809\20080907\E20080907_5591.JPG             


[rs2009]

The "use" for this features would be to be able to use xnview as a browser for an arbitrary collection of photo files with all of its great features at my disposal.

Exporting 1 file from file manager= start viewer, but 2 or more files= browser?

I don't mind starting the browser for a single photo. It is only one keystroke away from a viewer if I wanted a viewer. Plus it would keep the "workflow" and the design the same for every case.
--
Ray

[xnview]

Please try XnView 1.96 beta

[rs2009]

Hello Pierre,

Thanks for such a quick response.

I have downloaded the 1.96 beta, but I'm not sure how to access the browse filelist feature.

1. I downloaded a zip file: XnView-beta1.zip
2. I unzipped it on my C drive (not overwriting my previously installed version 1.95.4).
3. I am able to run the beta version and confirm that I am running 1.96 beta 1 (Jan 9 2009)

However, I do not know how to access the "File list to command line" feature.
It seems to behave the same as my 1.95.4 version. Do I need to do anything special (e.g. overwrite ini files etc?).

thanks
--
Ray

[rs2009]

Hi,

I think I found the option.

xnview -filelist <name_of_text_file>

I'm playing with it now.

thanks
--
Ray

[rs2009]

Hello,

"xnview -filelist <name_of_file>" is able to open the xnview browser with my files! Thanks!!!

I am invoking xnview from an unzipped download, instead of from an installed version in C:\Program Files\XnView. So I am not sure if you expect certain differences.

I'll list the changes that I've noticed in case they are actual bugs:

1. My rotated (portrait) photos are not auto-rotated in the thumbnails as they normally are. The preview image is correctly rotated.

2. My thumbnail label does not have all the information that it normally does. It has the filename, but is missing the image resolution.

3. The thumbnails seem to be regenerating every time I do the command line invocation instead of being used from the cache. (BTW - I have configured my cache file to be in a custom folder rather than the default).


thanks again for the quick implementation of this feature.
--
Ray

[rs2009]

A final post before I turn in: Some related suggestions:
1. Add the -filelist option to the Info > Command Line Help menu option.
2. Add the ability to open a filelist via GUI. That would be great for saved searches.
(3. I think there is already an option to save any selection as a filelist).

By the way, I noticed that relative paths work in the filelist as well as absolute paths. Great! I think that the absolute paths are relative to where XnView is invoked from rather than where the filelist is located. I think it would be better if the relative path is relative to the location of the filelist. (...still thinking that over...). I'll be using absolute paths for all my stuff regardless.

Have a nice weekend. Thanks for the added feature. I'm looking forward to seeing it in the release. I'll add more posts if I notice any other worthwhile behaviours.
--
Ray