XnView Software

My first post so welcome everybody.
I'm setting up image organizing on my wife's Mac (OS X 10.9.5) and chose XnView MP 0.68 (I use Windows/Lightroom, but that is overkill for her).
I spent the morning happily, customizing appearenace of the program (love the flexibility!).
I'm struggling for the rest of the day with keywords though...
It all started well, when read folders with photos, their keywords got automatically added and I could select from Categories filter what I liked - cool.
What I did not like were the pre-defined categories, so decided to remove them. So in 'Categories' pane I found Clear All... in Categories Management, hit it, and it cleared. All. Including the keywords
This is where the uphill struggle starts: I assumed the keywords initialy were added to the database when scanning the folder for the first time, I found 'Update database from files', it applies icons to the pictures (yellow snake tongue, it was not present on neither of thumbnail when the keywords were still ok), but nothing happens in Categories Filter: no keywords, no new Categories.

What is it I'm doing wrong (=how to manually import keywords from image to the database)?

Hi Olf and welcome!

It all started well, when read folders with photos, their keywords got automatically added and I could select from Categories filter what I liked - cool.

Yes, XnView MP reads the metadata embedded in files / sidecars and imports them automatically. Of course, this can be configured.

What I did not like were the pre-defined categories, so decided to remove them. So in 'Categories' pane I found Clear All... in Categories Management, hit it, and it cleared. All. Including the keywords

I'm sorry for you, but the feature does what it says: Categories -> Clear All. In fact you must do this at the beginning. Alternatively you could remove them one by one, of course.

This is where the uphill struggle starts: I assumed the keywords initialy were added to the database when scanning the folder for the first time, I found 'Update database from files', it applies icons to the pictures (yellow snake tongue, it was not present on neither of thumbnail when the keywords were still ok), but nothing happens in Categories Filter: no keywords, no new Categories.

What is it I'm doing wrong (=how to manually import keywords from image to the database)?

'Update database from files' should work.

The 'yellow snake' icon (nice analogy ) - which is the standard glyph for bookmark/category - shows that "something" is imported. If nothing appears, please do like this: Close the program, hide/rename the databases and restart the program. Does it work now?

If not then most probably the 'Clear All' removed the keywords from the files' embedded metadata.

How to find the databases: Go to Tools | Settings | Integration | Paths - click on "Open Catalog/Database Location" and rename/move elsewhere/delete (WITH XNVIEW CLOSED) the thumbs.db and xnview.db.

Please report back your findings.

m.Th. wrote:
The 'yellow snake' icon (nice analogy ) - which is the standard glyph for bookmark/category - shows that "something" is imported. If nothing appears, please do like this: Close the program, hide/rename the databases and restart the program. Does it work now?

m.Th., many thanks for your guidance!

Indeed hiding the databases caused XnView to rebuild it with default settings, and now when I read each folder, it populates categories based on keywords included in files - great!

As I start to understand what is happening, but still have fresh view, I noticed some issues/have wishes - where should I report them?

My findings:
1&2. The cause of the whole affair: sub-catergories produced automatically from keywords are based in category 'Other' in the default tree. When 'Clear All' executed and consecutive 'Update database from files' requested, nothing is assigned as parent node ('Other') is missing. I believe the keywords should be imported to the root: 1 - it will let refreshing/rebuilding the dictionary in cases like that; 2 - it will not cast hierarchy by default
3. The reason I could not delete catergories one by one and used 'kill'em all' option appears to be invoking rightclick (for actions pop-up menu) with ctrl, rather than Mac default cmd. (I blame Apple, but their rule is still a rule...). At the same time, the option button next to search window on the top of 'Categories' panel requires cmd for rightclick (so Apple-correctly)
4. The same (ctrl, not cmd to produce rightclick) issue in 'Categories filter' panel for categories action pop-up and worst of all - on the thumbnails in the main panel.
5. Categories based on keywords are imported at first file read (they appear in categories tree), but the yellow snake tongue only appears on the tumbnail after first filtering using 'Categories filter' panel
6. When category applied/removed in 'Categories' panel (by ticking/unticking), the marker only appears/disappears when another file selected (not immediately when toggled).
7. When category applied from action menu on the tumbnail, the marker appears immediately (so as should be in the above), but it would be nice to be able to toggle category on/off from that menu (it is one way only now, so any mistakes require going to the 'Categories' panel)
8. In 'Categories filter' ratings and colour labels expand every time XnView restarts, even if collapsed before closing. Categories on the other hand start collapsed, even if left expanded. Can the status be saved?
9. Any chance to change/set default zoom level of Google maps (in image Properies > GPS). 'Open GPS location in Google Maps' (and maybe Bing Maps?) menu option (on top of already offered Google Earth and GeoHack) would be nice

That's it (for now ) I'll carry on with organization.

Olf wrote:

m.Th. wrote:
The 'yellow snake' icon (nice analogy ) - which is the standard glyph for bookmark/category - shows that "something" is imported. If nothing appears, please do like this: Close the program, hide/rename the databases and restart the program. Does it work now?

m.Th., many thanks for your guidance!

Indeed hiding the databases caused XnView to rebuild it with default settings, and now when I read each folder, it populates categories based on keywords included in files - great!

As I start to understand what is happening, but still have fresh view, I noticed some issues/have wishes - where should I report them?

My findings:
1&2. The cause of the whole affair: sub-catergories produced automatically from keywords are based in category 'Other' in the default tree. When 'Clear All' executed and consecutive 'Update database from files' requested, nothing is assigned as parent node ('Other') is missing. I believe the keywords should be imported to the root: 1 - it will let refreshing/rebuilding the dictionary in cases like that; 2 - it will not cast hierarchy by default

This is serious. Didn't try, but it happens perhaps you need to start another thread just with this issue alone.

3. The reason I could not delete catergories one by one and used 'kill'em all' option appears to be invoking rightclick (for actions pop-up menu) with ctrl, rather than Mac default cmd. (I blame Apple, but their rule is still a rule...). At the same time, the option button next to search window on the top of 'Categories' panel requires cmd for rightclick (so Apple-correctly)

Don't have experience with XnView on mac but on Win indeed it uses Ctrl to select multiple items. However, Delete does NOT support multi-selection. And this is NOT good. I would rather support it by asking "Do you want to delete 'nn' categories?" (Of course, beware at recursive deletions etc.)

4. The same (ctrl, not cmd to produce rightclick) issue in 'Categories filter' panel for categories action pop-up and worst of all - on the thumbnails in the main panel.

See my comment above.

5. Categories based on keywords are imported at first file read (they appear in categories tree), but the yellow snake tongue only appears on the tumbnail after first filtering using 'Categories filter' panel

It seems that the GUI surface needs a refresh.

6. When category applied/removed in 'Categories' panel (by ticking/unticking), the marker only appears/disappears when another file selected (not immediately when toggled).

Yes. Speed reasons. Saving the categories one by one on a big selection can create speed issues. That's why the categories are applied together when the user leaves the current selection. However Pierre can implement a background thread with a queue in order to commit the change into the Catalog - a much better architecture IMHO but this is for another version.

7. When category applied from action menu on the tumbnail, the marker appears immediately (so as should be in the above), but it would be nice to be able to toggle category on/off from that menu (it is one way only now, so any mistakes require going to the 'Categories' panel)

Yep. There are also other problems with this method: the Categories Sets pane isn't updated.
I think that in a next version we should unify all the ways to assign/unassign categories in a single internal engine. This will allow a centralized way to assign/unassign and update the GUI with the selected categories on the selected images.

8. In 'Categories filter' ratings and colour labels expand every time XnView restarts, even if collapsed before closing. Categories on the other hand start collapsed, even if left expanded. Can the status be saved?

Theoretically? Yes, sure. Practically, is much more fuzzy that it sounds. Let's say that you have a big category tree with many nested levels. Why do you want to expand it? And where (to which node(s)) to expand? How many nodes to expand? The practice shows that a much more better approach is the 'History' and 'Suggested' category sets in the Category Sets pane.

9. Any chance to change/set default zoom level of Google maps (in image Properies > GPS). 'Open GPS location in Google Maps' (and maybe Bing Maps?) menu option (on top of already offered Google Earth and GeoHack) would be nice

That's it (for now ) I'll carry on with organization.

You won on the last one question. Only Pierre can answer there.

Btw, do you know that you can assign keyboard shortcuts to your categories and group them in sets in order to have much quicker access compared with the Tree?

Many thanks!

I'll report the real issues, hopefully the others (wishes?) will not be left unnoticed neither.
Edit: I'll play with 0.69 first, it looks very incouraging that the bugs are so quickly killed in updates!