XnView Software

Hi, I am new to xnview and evaluating for use in tagging imagery (specifically, quicktime movies).

One powerful aspect of tags would be the ability to locate the tag within multiple heirarchies, e.g. the keyword "rain" might exist within parent "liquid" or parent "weather" such that someone browsing could find the same category in either place.

At first glance, it appears keywords are represented by their full heirarchy in that testing a keyword category under multiple parents, Xnview treats them as different keywords. Is there a setting that would make it so xnview sees keywords as the same no matter where they show in the heirarchy?

Thanks!
Greg

if you have same keyword but multiple times with different parent, they are different

Thank you for the reply, Pierre!

This limitation makes tagging not much different than organizing in folders... Is there any specification out there that would allow the same keyword to be represented under multiple parents? This is really powerful for organization and finding what you need no matter what category you might “guess” like in the example above.

gimik wrote: Sat May 22, 2021 4:49 pm Thank you for the reply, Pierre!

You want to select for example 'rain' under 'liquid' or 'weather' and have all files for these 2 nodes?

Yes, essentially files tagged “rain” would be the same files no matter if rain is nested under “liquid” or under “weather”, or both.

In this way common images become more discoverable and dynamically organizable.

ok, i'll add a setting to be able to have files from a keyword with multiple parent

gimik wrote: Sat May 22, 2021 4:49 pm Thank you for the reply, Pierre!

This limitation makes tagging not much different than organizing in folders... Is there any specification out there that would allow the same keyword to be represented under multiple parents? This is really powerful for organization and finding what you need no matter what category you might “guess” like in the example above.

I believe there is not really the need to 'guess'. Let me show you 3 options you can already use today to find the correct location resp. files in question even if the subcategory is located under different parents:

1. In the Categories pane, when you type into the input field the categories containing the typed string get shown with their full hierarchy path.
2. Same like in no.1 goes for using the Category Sets: You type into the input field -> categories containing the string show up as suggestion with their full hierarchy path.
3. There is a brand new setting for the quick search to search in category names too. If you go to Settings->Browser and check Category (Catalog) then you can type the name you are looking for into the quick search field and it fill show files with that category as well.

1. and 2. are more like a lookup to learn the hierarchy path of a category. After you have found it you can use that information to locate the category in the 'Categories Filter' pane. If you press STRG you can select multiple categories which will then be shown altogether in the file browser.

For 3. the file browser would show files that contain the string in categories (but also in filename and everything else that has been checked in quick search settings).

Can I ask you 2 questions:
1. To me your suggestion sounds like you prefer to organize (display) categories in multi level hierarchies but they should function as categories at the same top level ?
2. With your suggestion, if you want to filter further, to show only a particular category, I can only imagine that to work, if every file has been tagged with full parents and subcategory, so you could conduct a search to include 'rain' but to exclude 'weather' for example. Is that the way you are using tagging, to always tag the full path? Like if you have 'weather|rain' do you tag it only as 'rain' or do you tag it as 'weather' and 'rain'?

xnview wrote: Fri May 28, 2021 7:53 am ok, i'll add a setting to be able to have files from a keyword with multiple parent

As said above, it sounds like quick search with search in categories would achieve what OP is looking for. Only problem would be that quick search per default is searching from other sources as well, like file name.
How about suggestion to further refine where quick search should search in by adding 'filename' as selectable search option. By excluding all options including file name, quick search could be made to search in categories only.

Additional suggestion is to add the quick search settings options to the quick search toolbar input field. That way it would be very convenient to switch the setting between searches instead of using the Tools->Settings menu.

I must say, that I personally see more advantages (or maybe I am just used to) to the hierarchy system. Maybe because you only have to tag a file with a subcategory to basically have the complete path to it stored. Imagine if you have a file: 'People|Couple|Wedding|Weather|Sunshine|Outdoor'. Despite the question if such a mixture does make sense, by simply ticking 'Outdoor' the entire path is saved as well. Otherwise I would have to tick every single category from such a path.
Additionally, I am using Category Sets a lot and the display of tags would be flooded with useless tags of parent categories which tend to be rather general hence useless. By tagging only the lowest subcategory I get displayed always the most fine tuned possible category shown.

At the same time I totally see your point, if you have 'weather|rain' and 'liquid|rain' a file would show 2 tags of 'rain' where sometimes 1 issue would be sufficient.
Therefore my general idea for XnViewMP would be that when working with categories it should always be possible to look files up by categories written name (this would catch any 'rain' subcategory no matter which parent they are under) but also with category a file has been checked (then it could take into account the hierarchy a category is in).

(This brings me to a feature enhancement that I will post after this. Edit: Suggestions have been posted here: viewtopic.php?p=170130#p170130)

So this got a bit longer than intended but I hope I have made my ideas clear.

In your example:
‘People|Couple|Wedding|Weather|Sunshine|Outdoor'

What if you have lots of “Outdoor” images but they are not of People, and you’d like to see all images “outdoor”? With hierarchical tagging only it seems you would need a separate tag/tree all together. But why, when you’ve already tagged them as “outdoor”?? In that path, *only* images that have all of those tags would be shown, but it shouldn’t matter which order they are nested...

No one is saying the hierarchical tagging should be removed, just that more often than not the same tag will probably show up under multiple parents.

gimik wrote: Sun May 30, 2021 12:32 am In your example:
‘People|Couple|Wedding|Weather|Sunshine|Outdoor'

What if you have lots of “Outdoor” images but they are not of People, and you’d like to see all images “outdoor”?

With the actual version of XnViewMP my preferred way is to use the quick search. That said I would type 'outdoor' into the quick search input field.

yeah but that assumes you have tagged the other images with a different “outdoor” tag, separate from the people/wedding/etc heirarchy, right?

gimik wrote: Mon May 31, 2021 6:56 am yeah but that assumes you have tagged the other images with a different “outdoor” tag, separate from the people/wedding/etc heirarchy, right?

I don't know if I understand you correctly. Here is my example:

1 file tagged with category: 'People|Couple|Wedding|Weather|Sunshine|Outdoor'
1 file tagged with category: 'Place|City|Rome|Cars|Outdoor'

When I enter 'Outdoor' in the quick search input field, both files get shown. The quick search displays all files that are tagged with a category that has 'Outdoor' in it. I thought this is what you want to achieve.

However what I must concede any file that has 'Outdoor' in its name would show up too. This is why I have suggested to add a setting to be able to turn of quick search in file name. With such a setting, a search could be restricted to categories only and would display any category with the search string in it.

But both of those images had to be tagged separately, right?

The way you are searching is the way I am suggesting images be tagged: both as “outdoor”. Then, If you want to organize later into hierarchies that combine tags , you can do so without retagging (eg “people” or “places”). Forcing tags to be hierarchical removes this flexibility.

gimik wrote: Wed Jun 02, 2021 6:27 am But both of those images had to be tagged separately, right?

The way you are searching is the way I am suggesting images be tagged: both as “outdoor”. Then, If you want to organize later into hierarchies that combine tags , you can do so without retagging (eg “people” or “places”). Forcing tags to be hierarchical removes this flexibility.

It sounds like your workflow is very much different from mine. But I try to understand yours.
So let's say you receive 2 new files, completely untagged. First file would fit into 'People|Couple|Wedding|Weather|Sunshine|Outdoor' category, the second on in the 'Place|City|Rome|Cars|Outdoor' category.

So from your writing I understand you would tag both files with 'Outdoor', right?

And after that you would like to create a category hierarchy for organization as follows: 'People|Couple|Wedding|Weather|Sunshine|Outdoor' and when you click 'Outoor' in that hierarchy both files would show up. And then you would create another hierarchy structure: 'Place|City|Rome|Cars|Outdoor' and when you click 'Outdoor' in there, again both files would show up.
What do you click, if you want to see only the picture 'Outdoor' from hierarchy in 'Place|City|Rome|Cars|'?
This basically comes with the question, why you want non-hierarchical categories to organize them in a hierarchical way? You can already today skip hirarchies altogether and create all categories on the same level.
To have some sort of organization you could use alphabet letters as parent. Meaning your parent categories would be A-Z and you put the subcategories where they belong by their first character: under 'r' you would put 'rain' under 'o' you would put the 'outdoor' category.
This way it would be very easy to locate a subcategory and at the same time keeping the subcategories unique.

I don’t think you’re following.

Both images would *not* show up in a hierarchy that represented different tags. Only images common to *all* tags in the heirarchy would display. The heirarchy of organizing tags would be irrelevant to the tags that are applied to an image so that you can choose to organize collections of tags in any way, without tagging them again. For example:

2 “outdoor” images. Both have wedding decorations. 1 has people

Tag them both as “outdoor”, one with “people”, one with “places”, and both with “wedding”. In this example, what if i want to organize/browse the tags in multiple ways?:

Outdoor > Weddings
Weddings > Outdoor > People
People

I can’t because the above are “different” tags. but why? the individual tags should operate independently and be able to be mix and matched and combined in any permutation. They are just filters.

With heirarchical tags, you cannot reorganize without retagging. The organization *is* the tag. You must determine the structure of your tagging first, and you cannot have a tag live in multiple hierarchies (well you can, but it isn’t the same tag, it would be a new one).

there’s also no way to know how someone is going to be trying find these. providing more than one path should be “free” and not require you to tag images all over again.

I honestly don’t understand what this request has to do with your workflow whatever it is, or how it would be detrimental. it’s simply more flexible to do whatever one wants with viewing tagged images, and “find” items by discovering tags in any way without knowing tags in advance. the best of both “folder” and tagging methodologies.

gimik wrote: Thu Jun 03, 2021 7:15 am I don’t think you’re following.

I am following your ideas very well don't worry.

I have showed you several ways to overcome your issue. The current XnViewMP versions offer solutions to find and display files of subcategories located in different hierarchies without real problems.

And this is why I am saying what you want is tags on one level, but being able to organize them in a hierarchical way at the same time.

I have also proposed a way how to achieve this already today.

What you want is a virtual representation layer that fakes a hierarchy for organizational purposes. You want to organize tags in a hierarchical way, but want a flat structure of categories.
Don't worry, I understand this very well and I have showed you ways how to achieve what you want already.

What you fail to understand is that the current implementation is not made to create 'collections'. You want to tag, organize and display from within the same area and it is not made for this.

gimik wrote: Thu Jun 03, 2021 7:15 am The heirarchy of organizing tags would be irrelevant to the tags that are applied to an image so that you can choose to organize collections of tags in any way, without tagging them again. For example:

2 “outdoor” images. Both have wedding decorations. 1 has people

Tag them both as “outdoor”, one with “people”, one with “places”, and both with “wedding”. In this example, what if i want to organize/browse the tags in multiple ways?:

Outdoor > Weddings
Weddings > Outdoor > People
People

I can’t because the above are “different” tags.

I am repeating myself: Quick Search is the way to go. If you type 'Outdoor' into quick search then it will display files tagged as 'Outdoor > Weddings' as well as 'Weddings > Outdoor > People'. No need to reorganize anything.

I say it again: What you want is an additional layer that transforms same level categories into a hierarchical structure for creating collections. But it is not required as what you want can be achieved easily today already.