Image-wise text notes

[vredesbyyrd]

Hi,

Aurelien has an issue open for ansel considering this feature. I personally believe it would be extremely useful in Darktable. As an ugly workaround I have kept a markdown file containing filename -> note, which is pretty messy. To quote the original issue

In the lifecycle of an image, you may need to pass-on notes:

* comments and remarks of the client regarding current edit or expectations,

* technical details to remember for later edits/prints (color profile used, issues during processing, trade-offs made during editing),

* done and to-do lists,

* URLs and pathes to ressources linked to the current image (reference images/moodboards, exported files, etc.)

Images should have a way to store text notes, possibly as Markdown, in the database and XMP.

Do you think something along these lines could be implemented with a lua script? I do not expect anyone to do it, I'm more so opening this for discussion, ideas and thoughts from the community.

Thanks for your time!

[wpferguson]

Several years ago Aurelien talked about a collaborative workflow where the photographer would attach notes/color labels/ratings/etc to pictures, then bundle the whole thing up and send it to another person to "finish" the images according to the instructions.

I did some work on that, but most of the concentration was on the packaging/unpackaging to get the information and images transferred. I did create some information and attach it, but I would have to go back and see what I did and what my thought process was.

Having said all that I think this is doable (at first glance) with a lua script. I wouldn't store the information in the XMP file because it would probably get overwritten. Storing the information in a md file with the images or in a subdirectory under would work. Spawning a web editor process isn't hard (add a shortcut), but I'm not sure how difficult it would be getting the web editor to use a specific local file.

[wpferguson]

Finally got back to this.

darktable already stores notes as part of the XMP and the database. The note field has no limit (it's an sqlite3 varchar). Lua can read and write the notes field for an image.

So, it would/should be fairly easy to use a shortcut to have lua read the notes field for the image, spawn an external editor, get the results of the edit, and assign it to the notes.

Just played with obsidian.md for a little bit.

So from an image you could have a shortcut that creates a file in the obsidian vault if it doesn't exist and populates it with the current value of the notes field. You edit the note in obsidian and then close obsidian. The script reads the file and assigns it to the note field.

[vredesbyyrd]

Sorry, somehow I missed your initial comment from October.

Coincidentally, I started thinking about this script a bit over the last couple days.

darktable already stores notes as part of the XMP and the database. The note field has no limit (it's an sqlite3 varchar). Lua can read and write the notes field for an image.

That's very useful info to know, thank you.

So far, I have only thought about this on a very surface level, but I do think it would be nice for this to be a module. A module would be a quick indicator whether or not there is an existing note, and the ability to read/create/edit notes directly within darktable would be very convenient, imo.

One obvious downside is you would not have the power of a full blown markdown editor. But I'm still torn on what would be more useful - a module for quick, minimal text based (maybe .md) notes, or your approach of spawning a proper editor.

I am not a programmer by any stretch, but have written small tools with lua before. As soon as time allows I'm planning on digging into the darktable lua api and examples, and at least attempting to come up with something useful.

EDIT:

I just realized we can use the notes field in the metadata editor for simple notes. lol. So I need to think about this more.