This is a re-post of the part of viewtopic.php?p=172031 that didn't get addressed, as requested. Full discussion is there, but for a more concise summary...
Summary:
When using the catalog, if some files/folders are added, deleted, or renamed/moved beneath the catalog's base path, there's no way to recursively "update" the catalog accordingly.
Repro:
1) Settings->Catalog->Enable Catalog
2) Settings->Catalog->Base path of your pictures->Select a folder that contains a few subfolders of photos (with keywords). e.g. add D:\Pics, which contains D:\Pics\sub1 and D:\Pics\sub2.
3) Settings->Catalog->Import folder->Select the same base dir, e.g. D:\Pics
4) Use Categories Filter to confirm that it found some photos with keywords
5) Navigate to D:\Pics in Windows File Explorer. Rename D:\Pics\sub2 to D:\Pics\sub3, and add a new D:\Pics\sub4.
6) At this point, XnView's catalog is out of date - we need to do something to re-synchronize it with what's actually within your photo collection on disk. However, Settings->Catalog->Synchronize Folders doesn't work: it did not find any of these changes (i.e. sub3 & sub4 have not been added, sub2 has not been removed).
Desired solution:
We need some option to scan within D:\Pics (the Catalog's Base path), drop the files that were removed & add files that are new (and update any changed metadata in files that remain). The ideal place for such an option is in the folder tree (that's where Lightroom has it - screenshot below) : you just right-click a folder & select "Synchronze," and it will scan & synchronize recursively down the tree from whichever level it's run. Being able to do this from the folder tree has 2 benefits: You can synchronize easily without needing to dig through the settings, and you can synchronize more selectively. If you right-click the highest-level root folder in your catalog it will synchronize everything below that, but you can also right click a lower-level folder & synchronise from there. In other words, rather than synchronizing from D:\Pics (the entire catalog), you can right click D:\Pics\Trips, and synchronice just the tree from that level. With a very large catalog, this can save a lot of time. In any case, after Synchronize Folders is run, then everything below that folder will be updated so that the catalog again exactly matches whatever is on disk.
Screenshot:
Why this is needed:
There are many cases where it's not feasible to exclusively use XnView for managing the files - i.e. dual boot sytems that share a partition, or when managing media on a removable device that is sometimes used from other systems. Thus, after manipulating the file structure on disk, it's necessary to have some way to tell XnView to update its catalog accordingly.
Thanks again!
