Can we have tags under multiple parents?

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1

Hi there

I keep running into this issue: Some tags really belong to more than one parent.

For example, my “Hermione” tag should live under both ​People and ​Harry Potter Novels. But right now, I have to make two separate “Hermione” tags (one under each parent), then tag photos twice. It’s super easy to mess up when bulk editing! :sweat_smile:

Maybe we could let a single tag exist under multiple parents (like a web)

The interface can remain as a tree structure, while allowing the ‘Hermione’ tag to visibly exist under both the ‘People’ parent tag and the ‘Harry Potter Novels’ parent tag simultaneously

That way, tagging a photo once with “Hermione” would auto-cover all its parent categories. Super handy for cross-category stuff like book characters + real-world topics!

Is this technically possible? What do you think?
(translated by DeepSeek)

2

for such options i move children tag outside.

3

then when I view ‘people’ or ‘Harry Potter Novel’ tag, 'Hermione’s will not be displayed…

4

my idea was to do your 3 tags separate:
people
Harry Potter Novel
Hermione

and if you have on photo Hermione: you tag 3 tags people, Harry Potter Novel, Hermione.

Also, for my opinion, your people tag is redundant at all

5

Hi @LiangWenjian,
digiKam does not support multiple parents for the same tag. We are exploring an idea we are calling “related tags”, but no plans yet.

The idea for “Related Tags” is you can assign an existing tag to another tag as a “related tag”. When the first tag is applied, the system would also apply the related tags. We are also discussing making related tags recusive. For example B is related to A, and C and related B. When applying the A tag, B would be assigned as a related tag. Since C is related to B, C would also get assigned. We are thinking turning recursion on/off would be a user settings.

Would this fill your need?

Cheers,
Mike

6

@michmill well, after I deep think, this maybe my actual requirements:

  1. Anything tagged with ​’A’ is also belong to ​’B’ and ​’C’, but ​’B’ and ​’C’ aren’t related at all. For example: A = “birds”, B = “animals”, C = “fly”.
  2. When I look at stuff under ​’B’, I want to also see images tagged only with ​’A’ (but not stuff tagged just with ​’C’). Same with ​’C’—show ​A-tagged stuff, but not tagged only with ​’B’.

So a ​’multi-parent tag system’ look like the obvious fix.

But it seems that your idea actually works too? that’s great!

and How would the tags actually show up in the UI though?

7

on a similar topic > when I imported 30K photos into which had been tagged and face recogised in Picasa3. Some of the tags in DK were listed as tags, some as “people”, and looking at the IPTC, EXIF, XMP, info they are an assortment of either “keywords”, “subject” “TagsList” and “Hierarchical Subject” perhaps others also. So how to make sure that when I refresh a folder in DK containing files that have had tags recently added to them, that DK will read and show the newly added tags.

The reason for doing this is to try to workaround the lack of support for the Picasa Albums created in Picasa, which do not get recognised by DK when importing a fully tagged and complete Picasa library. OR have I missed something !!?? cheers CD

8

OK, I’m answering my own Q, this may be a help for others.

I have found that by default the information/metadata displayed with each photo is read from the DK database, not from the photo data embedded in the photo file itself. This explains why external viewers do show a newly added tag, but inside DK that new tag is not shown at all.

I found within in DK Tools > Maintenance > Sync Metadata and Database option, you have the option to write the metadata from the photos to the DK’s database, and vice versa. This will fix the problem which I had.

But I have to ask one thing. Even though I had the option Settings>configure DK>behaviour>scan for new items at startup, and >Rescan files when files are modified, both enabled. This did not appear to do the actual tasks. I tried enabling the option to use ExifTool to do the reading and writing, and backend writing, both to no avail.

So why does the DK not show the data in the photos by default? why does the database not synchronise automatically by default, or at minimum by default write to the database when the app is at idle.
Anyone?
cheers CD