Structure of catalog and implications for multi-PC XnView environment

[Scrubs]

I have my photos on a NAS in a folder structure with \Photos at the top of the tree. I use XnView on 3 different PCs to view and process the photos. I only ever use XnView on one PC at a time. i.e. never concurrently. For performance reasons I use a file synchronisation program to manage local mirror copies of the \Photos folder on the NAS which includes a subfolder of XnView containing the following files:

default.bar
default.keys
iptc.ini
layout1.dat
search.ini
style_sheet.qss
style_sheet_win.qss
Thumb.db
XnView.db

Before using XnView on a PC I aways first synchronise from the NAS and after working on that PC I synchronise back to the NAS.

On each of the PCs I have used the Settings>Integration>Paths dialog to point XnView to the directory containing the local copies of the catalog database, thumbnail database and 'other files'. This configuration and strict synchronisation rules seems to work well in enabling me to work on any of my PCs independently whilst keeping the catalog and thumbnails databases consistent.

When I look in Settings>Browser>Catalog dialog under 'Catalog maintenance' I see a list of folder paths which includes folders from the NAS but also from all of the PCs on which I use XnView. So when I look in 'Catalog maintenance' on PC A I see folder paths for PC B and PC C and vice versa. I had assumed that the catalog is contained only in the XnView.db file but the list of folders under 'Catalog maintenance' suggests otherwise.

Can you provide some information about the structure of the catalog and how and when the folder paths are populated in 'Catalog maintenance'? And given the mirroring process I have described does it matter that folder structures on one PC are listed in 'Catalog maintenance' on a different PC? e.g. would it break the catalog if on PC A I used 'Catalog maintenance' to delete a folder path from PC B?

[michel038]

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