Improvements for keyword (category) search in XnView MP

[KLE-France]

Salut Pierre, Hello to all,

The "Categories" and "Keywords" (these of course are related in XnView) functions in the search dialog can be improved:

1) Ctrl+F → Add >> → Categories

Currently, one can choose if the search "contains", "does not contain" or "is" the category or categories checked in the dropdown list. This wording is confusing.

Let's say I want to search for all images that have BOTH Jane AND Bob in them. So, I want the search to return images that contain both "Jane" and "Bob" as keywords (categories). I choose thus "contain" and check both "Jane" and "Bob". This does return images with both Jane and Bob in them, but also all of the images with Jane in them but not Bob, and those with Bob in them but not Jane.

If I want to exclude the images of only Jane and only Bob, I have to use the "is" modifier. This effectively returns the images with Jane and Bob, and excludes those with only Jane or only Bob. However, it does not exclude other keywords/categories that might be in the image. All of the returned images indeed contain Jane and Bob, but there are also images that contain Jane and Bob and Martha and Sam; and Jane and Bob and William and Carol; etc.

Semantically, "contains" means "this thing is found within" without any exclusivity (unless so indicated). "Is" is the equivalent of an equal sign.

So I would propose that the modifiers should be as follows:

⇒ "contains (and)" — The classic "and" function: the image contains all checked categories: If "Jane" and "Bob" are both checked, images must contain both "Jane" and "Bob", but there may be other keywords/categories in the files as well.

⇒ "contains (or)" — The classic "or" function: the image contains any one of the checked categories: If "Jane" and "Bob" are both checked, images must contain either "Jane", or "Bob", or both, but there may be other keywords/categories in the files as well.

⇒ "is exactly" (or "is only" or "contains exclusively") — The image must contain only the checked categories: If "Jane" and "Bob" are both checked, images must contain both "Jane" and "Bob" and nothing else.

⇒ "does not contain (and)" — Same as above but to exclude.

⇒ "does not contain (or)" — Same as above but to exclude.

⇒ "is not exactly" (or "is not only" or "does not contain exclusively") — Same as above but to exclude.

2) Ctrl+F → Add >> → IPTC-IIM → Keywords

To be brief (too late!), the suggested modifiers above should be implemented here as well.

The current modifiers are extremely limited. "is any of" is the classic "or" function, but cannot by used negatively to exclude. The "contains" modifier can only search one keyword at a time (unless I'm missing something (other than adding a second line)?), cannot by used negatively to exclude, and cannot differentiate between keywords sharing a word (e.g., in my collection, searching "Landscape" returns images with the keyword "Landscape", but also images with the keyword "Intimate landscape").

I am conscious that other aspects of the search dialog in combination with additional search lines can resolve some of the issues above, but I think refining and expanding the search modifier choices would greatly simplify the search process. I underline in particular that regular expressions are anything but regular for the layperson. Bref, the goal here is to simplify the tool's use.

Thanks for hearing me out and happy shooting to all.

[m.Th.]

You have some of them already in the Catalog Filter pane:

Catalog filter.jpg (29.43 KiB) Viewed 781 times