[Shotwell] Filter on tag but exclude child tags

[Dougie Nisbet]

On 04/01/2012 21:37, Michiel Detailleur wrote:
> [ ... ]
>
> However (there always is one isn't it ;) ): I would like to be able to 
> filter on tags like I could in F-Spot. In F-Spot, tags are 
> hierarchical, but not quite like Shotwell implements it.
>
> For example, consider the following, very imaginative, tag hierarchy:
>
> Parent
>    \-> Child A
>         \-> Grand Child
>     \-> Child B
>
> Photos tagged with 'Child A' do not automatically obtain the tag 
> 'Parent'. So if you filter on Parent, you don't automatically get the 
> photos tagged 'Child A' or 'Child B' or 'Grand Child', unless those 
> photos are also explicitly tagged with 'Parent'.
>
> Shotwells implementation differs from this (child tags automatically 
> obtain the parent tags). That's not particularly good or bad, if 
> however Shotwell would also make it possible to filter like F-Spot 
> does: filter all photos tagged with 'Parent' and only 'Parent', 
> meaning: exclude all photos tagged with 'Child A/B' or 'Grand Child'. 
> This is handy for numerous reasons.

This makes fascinating reading for me as I noticed exactly the same 
thing migrating from f-spot to shotwell. For me the problems are 
slightly different as I've got into a routine of renaming images based 
on their tags. In f-spot, when I noticed that only the terminal-child 
tag was written as meta-data to the image I sometimes had to compensate 
for it, as I *wanted* some of the parent tags in the filenames. I 
examined what f-shot physically wrote to the file and wrote my 
rename-script accordingly (http://www.bluecedar.org.uk/?p=143).

However after migrating to shotwell I've discovered, as you have, that 
the child tags inherit the parent tags, and if 'write metadata to file' 
is checked, then an image file can have an awful lot of tags. This means 
my rename script often gives filenames that are, 1. Too long, and 2. 
Have unhelpful tags in the name (e.g. 'location', and 'Family').

I have to say though, that I think shotwell have got it right, and 
f-spot had it wrong. For me anyway, it makes far more logical sense for 
the child tags to inherit the parent tags, even if it does cause me a 
bit of short-term hassle.

Dougie