In Gwenview, there are two panes along the left, one for Meta Information and another for Semantic Information.

My question is: Why is there a distinction between the two? Are they not, at least in the case of image information, synonyms?

Functionaly, a difference in this case is that there is a wall between them. Information kept behind Semantic wall is not visible in the Metadata, and vice versa. This results in users having to do twice as much work to micro-manage their data and in bugs such as https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=280043

If I understand it correctly, Meta information is contained within the file itself, usually in the form of EXIF or IPTC data, while Semantic information is stored in Nepomuk / Baloo - and covers tags and comments. They're likely shown separately technical reasons (the systems to retrieve them are different).

It's hard to see the utility of keeping them separate. It would be useful if all tags were stored as XMP Metadata and all metadata be made available to Nepomuk / Baloo.

The storage of some metadata in the files themselves would be up to individual applications.

In terms of getting the information out of the files, Baloo does support limited indexing of some attributes, however it does not retrieve every single EXIF / XMP / etc attribute as this would be wasteful to index (and consume large amounts of disk space).

bcooksley wrote:The storage of some metadata in the files themselves would be up to individual applications.

Of course. In this case I was posting about how gwenview handles things.

bcooksley wrote:In terms of getting the information out of the files, Baloo does support limited indexing of some attributes, however it does not retrieve every single EXIF / XMP / etc attribute as this would be wasteful to index (and consume large amounts of disk space).

OK, agreed that indexing the hundreds of attributes in XMP would be overkill. But it should not be an issue to handle a couple of dozen. If Baloo can't handle that without bogging down, it needs a restructuring.

I'm not sure which attributes it retrieves from images, but if I recall correctly certain attributes are retrieved and indexed. You'd have to ask the Baloo developers though to know which ones are retrieved.

Yes, I've already been in touch with the Baloo developers. Support for indexing XMP metadata should be in an upcoming release. https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=330989

It would be cool if gwenview already had integrated XMP metadata into Semantic Info by the time that happens ...

I would suggest contacting the Gwenview developers regarding that, or alternatively filing a feature request asking for them to be better integrated.

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=332921

Metadata are the photo (camera) Exif data. Semantic Information is related to the semantic desktop, information that the user adds.
I think it would be a bad idea to combine both fields. To me they are not related and would not good if the semantic information is confused with the Exif data embedded in the photo from the camera.
On the other hand, it would be good to be able to choose which field should be shown and be able to resize them. Particularly I hate the semantic desktop and everything related to file and activities indexing. Is very helpful to me can see all Exif data in Gwenview lateral panel, but the semantic information field covers half of the panel and is very annoying.

My images contain much more Metadata then what each individual camera (if there was one) was capable of writing.

For example, CC license terms, GPS data, image Description and Subject, Creator contact information, etc. In the case of wildlife images, such details as species, ***, and individual identifiers.

i would rather the computer did all the hard work, rather then trying to micro-manage everything myself. So I would like all that metadata to be indexed and searchable.

With regards to that, I would suggest filing a feature request against Baloo - although you'll probably need to use specialist tools to perform searches on that type of metadata.

apater wrote:My images contain much more Metadata then what each individual camera (if there was one) was capable of writing.

For example, CC license terms, GPS data, image Description and Subject, Creator contact information, etc. In the case of wildlife images, such details as species, ***, and individual identifiers.

i would rather the computer did all the hard work, rather then trying to micro-manage everything myself. So I would like all that metadata to be indexed and searchable.

Depending on your exact requirements, work-flow, etc, I would suggest you take a look at "Recoll" http://www.lesbonscomptes.com/recoll/

A stand-alone utility, it provides *very* powerful indexing and search capabilities, and is *highly* customizable.

With regard to image files, "as is" it will index the EXIF, Makernote, IPTC, and XMP data.

Quick screen shot (click to enlarge) of a rather hasty search for gpslatitude...



Recoll is a serious piece of software, I only wish that I'd found it sooner

Edit: As an afterthought, I'm surprised you're using Gwenview, I'd have thought for professional or semi-professional use you'd have opted for digiKam. Each to their own of course.