Preferred way to add synonyms or linked terms

[Stephen]

I wish to add Latin America to the applicable countries. I could add this as a synonym but see two issues:

1. Latin America is a geographic region, but South America is already taken, which why I considered using the synonym field on a country basis.

2. For some countries I have lots of images - 18,000 Brazil. I discovered only last week what a hardware fault can produce when syncing a large group of images. Syncing in blocks of a few hundred would take ages.

Looking forward to hearing views on this please.

[Mike Buckley]

I think the decision about whether to assign both Latin America and South America to an image depends on your needs. As an example, I chose not to use both, just as I chose not to assign both Mediterranean and Europe; instead I assign only Europe to pertinent places. That's because I am the only person searching for my images and I know how I set everything up. However, if I was cataloging my images so potential clients could search my images, I would certainly assign both terms to enhance the likelihood that they would find what they are looking for.

As for synching large numbers of images, I wouldn't hesitate to synch at least 5000 at a time, as I never have any trouble doing that. As an example, I recently imported 3000 images and my Preference setting regarding Auto synch is enabled. No problems with synching whatsoever. If I remember correctly, your problems were not produced by a hardware fault as much as an ineffective backup system that is now improved, but I could be wrong.

[Stephen]

As for synching large numbers of images, I wouldn't hesitate to synch at least 5000 at a time, as I never have any trouble doing that. As an example, I recently imported 3000 images and my Preference setting regarding Auto synch is enabled. No problems with synching whatsoever.

Others here have said that synchronizing more than a few hundred images is likely to cause problems. Although I have done it, I wanted to hear other views.

SIDETRACK
quote="Mike Buckley"]If I remember correctly, your problems were not produced by a hardware fault as much as an ineffective backup system that is now improved, but I could be wrong.[/quote]
You are wrong and I remember it much more clearly. It was caused when the system spontaneously re-booted itself while syncing 6,000 images. Effectively a power cut.

[Mike Buckley]

It was caused when the system spontaneously re-booted itself while syncing 6,000 images. Effectively a power cut.

I disagree with the essence of your characterization. The true time-consuming and frustrating nature of your problems would not have occurred if you had implemented an effective backup system. Fortunately, you now seem to be implementing one.

[Stephen]

You must be having a bad day!

[fbungarz]

Sorry to be nit-picking here...
Latin America, in my humble opinion, is NOT a geographic region. It is a linguistic one! For example, Mexico geographically clearly belongs to North America, but linguistically it is part of Latin America. so, Latin America is not a synonym of South America and I don't think it would be accurate to use it that way.
That aside: aren't we fortunate that labels are virtual categories? So, in the case cited above, you can easily have Mexico as a label nested below North America, but nevertheless still also tag it with 'Latin America'. As mentioned before, it depends on your needs: is there a situation, where you want to search for the countries in North and South America where Spanish or Portuguese is predominantly spoken instead of English? Than use that term in addition to the geographic categories. [BTW - there are some countries in the Caribbean, which geographically I guess belongs to Central America, were neither English nor Portuguese/Spanish is the predominant language, but French, or even Dutch...].

[fbungarz]

Off-topic:
I am not familiar with Macs, but out of curiosity: why would it re-boot automatically while a program is running? Windows 10 is pretty bad about forcing automatic updates on you, but so far I never experienced it forcibly rebooting while a program was still active.!Personally, if that ever happened to me, it'd be a strong reason for me to reconsider buying any such product. But then, perhaps that is what we are about to expect with cloud computing forcing unwanted updates down our throats...?

[Mike Buckley]

You must be having a bad day!

Just the opposite.

[vlad]

Others here have said that synchronizing more than a few hundred images is likely to cause problems. Although I have done it, I wanted to hear other views.

Imho, a blanket statement would be unwise: it all depends on many factors, including the machine specs, image size, whether you leave Supreme to synch in peace or keep cataloguing, etc. Right now, I wouldn't synch more than a few hundred images at a time, but I'm soon going to install Supreme on a much faster laptop and my own comfort level could well change.

Sorry to be nit-picking here...
Latin America, in my humble opinion, is NOT a geographic region. It is a linguistic one!

Yes, but we could consider Latin America as a geographical region encompassing all South, Central and North American countries where a latin language is broadly spoken.

For example, Mexico geographically clearly belongs to North America, but linguistically it is part of Latin America. so, Latin America is not a synonym of South America and I don't think it would be accurate to use it that way.

I absolutely agree with that, but Stephen mentioned that he could use Latin America as a synonym for applicable countries.

That aside: aren't we fortunate that labels are virtual categories? So, in the case cited above, you can easily have Mexico as a label nested below North America, but nevertheless still also tag it with 'Latin America'.

Exactly. Now, the problem is: how do you remember to tag all applicable images with Latin America?

I dealt with a similar situation, where I wanted to distinguish all pictures taken somewhere in Central Europe. What I ended up doing was to define a (private) '_regions_' label directly under Europe and then add Central Europe under it (as a non-private label). Then, I added countries such as Austria, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia as label relationships; this way, those country labels are automatically shown (as related labels) under Central Europe too, while Central Europe is in turn shown as a related label under each of those countries!

(That still leaves me responsible for assigning both Central Europe and the country label, but it gets easier to remember and check. Furthermore, there is FR #2603 for optionally enabling the automatic assignment of related labels, which could neatly address use cases such as those discussed here, but it also poses a number of problems.)

[Stephen]

Latin America, in my humble opinion, is NOT a geographic region. It is a linguistic one!
So, in the case cited above, you can easily have Mexico as a label nested below North America, but nevertheless still also tag it with 'Latin America'.

Exactly. Now, the problem is: how do you remember to tag all applicable images with Latin America?

Frank, your comment about the linguistic association is perfectly true and Vlad's about remembering to do it is my point.
To avoid having 50,000+ images suddenly out of sync, if I mark South America, I want to do this on a country by country basis.

Whether using a synonym is the right way or a related label, I don't yet know. I would like to avoid future errors in case orphaned images appear which need Latin America adding and due to haste, I inadvertently choose the Bolivian Republic of Venezuela instead of Bolivia. Just thinking aloud what things could happen when typing quickly. A related label might obviate that. I need to test.

[Stephen]

Off-topic:
I am not familiar with Macs, but out of curiosity: why would it re-boot automatically while a program is running? Windows 10 is pretty bad about forcing automatic updates on you, but so far I never experienced it forcibly rebooting while a program was still active.!Personally, if that ever happened to me, it'd be a strong reason for me to reconsider buying any such product. But then, perhaps that is what we are about to expect with cloud computing forcing unwanted updates down our throats...?

My 2 Mac guys and the Mac workshop had never heard of this either. It appears (or we think so) that the cause was an interaction between a particular anti-counterfeiting kext which some software manufacturers put on your system and the tool used to calibrate the colour monitor. It took a lot of analysis of the crash log by experts to determine this.

Disaster analysis is only accurate afterwards and in fact everything went quite well, thanks. In fact the stability of Mac system is one main reason that I am glad to have switched from Windows. Under normal circumstances it would / could not have happened.
A power supply is always used on the laptop and that is attached to a UPS. All images are available in triplicate and copies to 2 drives are made daily. All of these drives are also connected to the UPS. The only loss was the time reconstructing a few portfolios, which was less than estimated. Just in case of another system crash, the PSu database is now backed up daily.

END OF OFF-TOPIC

[fbungarz]

Hi Stephen,
thanks for clarifying that Macs typically don't do a forced reboot. Like I said: I don't have much experience, but am not surprised that they too suffer from conflicts between different software packages. What you say confirms my prejudice: they are probably only more stable, because the software universe available for the Mac is still tiny by comparison with the PC.

But anyway, back on topic:
I wonder if configuring PSu to use 'synchronous mode' would have made a difference. The setting supposedly increases database security but comes with a performance price tag. Michael Weidner has a website with several PSU custom tips, including enabling synchronous mode (which is off by default), have a look at: http://www.senoiaphoto.com/psu

I could be wrong and certainly am no expert, but to me it seems that the crash you reported is a typical case of database corruption caused by a crash while some of the info was still being cached and not written to the database yet. If I understand this correctly synchronous mode would prevent the data being cached and enforce it being written immediately to the database. Even in the event of a sudden power failure the database would then presumably not be affected...

Cheers,
Frank

[Stephen]

Frank, frankly I think the chance of that recurring is extremely remote, but thanks anyway. I prefer to have a standard set-up as far as possible, so that it is easier to adapt to any special needs which occur anyway, if you see what I mean

Also, Mac is (usually) SO stable, that it even copes well when Windows crashes. I have Windows emulated on the Mac.

Furthermore, I would find it hard to deal with lower system performance at the moment.