Issue with long catalog label display

[Roman]

Thank you for your reply. As I am still coming to grips with scientific names, I think the sub and super divisions will have to wait until I feel a need for them. I know that I should learn the scientific names, but it is not easy at my age (72 next birthday). I find myself having to open a label's details to verify the vernacular name is what I thought it should be. If you mouse over a label it displays the category hierarchy, which is very useful, but I would find it beneficial if it also displayed the label description and/or synonyms. Is this something you might find useful, or are you happy working with the scientific name and don't feel a need to check the vernacular name?

[gcorbin]

With respect to scientific names, my major photographic subjects are birds, orchids, animals and insects. I know and use scientific names for orchids. I know and use common names for birds and animals and do not know scientific names for birds and animals. For insects, I know higher level common names (stick insects, stink bugs, millipedes, etc) but know neither species level common names nor scientific names. Thus, largely, I am not familiar with scientific names although I am trying to learn them, somewhat unsuccessfully, since basing my cataloguing largely on scientific names.

To label with scientific names when I know the common name, I just type enough of the common name in the search of the labels tab to get the label I require. (The search will find synonyms which I populate with the common name.) When there is one label suggested, that is the label I require. In practice, this works most of the time but occasionally I cannot remember the spaces or dashes in the common name so I open a new photo tab and search the category labels for the common name I require, maybe checking two or three labels before I find the one I need. Once I have the label I require, hovering over the label gives me the common name which I then type into the search box as in the previous step.

So far, this works for me without any significant difficulties. Because, like you, I generally don’t know scientific names, I include a custom thumbnail info line which displays the common name, scientific name and finally headline separated by |s for each photo. The scientific name and potentially common name are populated for identified organisms but where I cannot identify to species level, the taxonomic level of what I did identify to is reported. eg. Columbiformes (Pigeons and Doves) if I have not identified the bird to species. The inclusion of the headline is to cater for photos not of organisms. ie. photos of family, scenery, buildings, etc.

Red Browed Finch 1.png (72.62 KiB) Viewed 93 times

The code for this custom thumbnail line is a bit long but works well for all my cataloguing.

Code: Select all

%xmp:dwc:Taxon.dwc:vernacularName|%code result := iif(length('%xmp:dwc:Taxon.dwc:scientificName{encode=quotes}')>0,'%xmp:dwc:Taxon.dwc:scientificName{encode=quotes}',iif(length('%xmp:dwc:Taxon.dwc:genus{encode=quotes}')>0,'%xmp:dwc:Taxon.dwc:genus{encode=quotes}',iif(length('%xmp:dwc:Taxon.dwc:family{encode=quotes}')>0,'%xmp:dwc:Taxon.dwc:family{encode=quotes}',iif(length('%xmp:dwc:Taxon.dwc:order{encode=quotes}')>0,'%xmp:dwc:Taxon.dwc:order{encode=quotes}',iif(length('%xmp:dwc:Taxon.dwc:class{encode=quotes}')>0,'%xmp:dwc:Taxon.dwc:class{encode=quotes}',iif(length('%xmp:dwc:Taxon.dwc:phylum{encode=quotes}')>0,'%xmp:dwc:Taxon.dwc:phylum{encode=quotes}',iif(length('%xmp:dwc:Taxon.dwc:kingdom{encode=quotes}')>0,'%xmp:dwc:Taxon.dwc:kingdom{encode=quotes}',''))))))); %/code|%xmp:photoshop:Headline

Also, I have added some custom fields to the Info panel so I can always see the scientific name and common name for an organism and headline for everything else.

Red Browed Finch 2.png (22.06 KiB) Viewed 93 times

Lastly, to keep myself organised, I have created a custom sort to sort my photos by organism. My custom sort script macro sorts by common name, scientific name (or whatever taxonomic level exists), Headline, photo date and finally filename. This will sort any photo in a logical order for me irrespective of its cataloguing or lack thereof. Again, since I primarily work by common name, I sort by common name first. It also puts uncatalogued (no scientific name, taxonomic label or headline) at the beginning of the photo list, so it makes cataloguing easy as the photos yet to be catalogued are at the top of the list with catalogued photos at the end correctly sorted.

The code for this sort script macro is:-

Code: Select all

%xmp:dwc:Taxon.dwc:vernacularName{encode=quotes}|%code result := iif(length('%xmp:dwc:Taxon.dwc:scientificName{encode=quotes}')>0,'%xmp:dwc:Taxon.dwc:scientificName{encode=quotes}',iif(length('%xmp:dwc:Taxon.dwc:genus{encode=quotes}')>0,'%xmp:dwc:Taxon.dwc:genus{encode=quotes}',iif(length('%xmp:dwc:Taxon.dwc:family{encode=quotes}')>0,'%xmp:dwc:Taxon.dwc:family{encode=quotes}',iif(length('%xmp:dwc:Taxon.dwc:order{encode=quotes}')>0,'%xmp:dwc:Taxon.dwc:order{encode=quotes}',iif(length('%xmp:dwc:Taxon.dwc:class{encode=quotes}')>0,'%xmp:dwc:Taxon.dwc:class{encode=quotes}',iif(length('%xmp:dwc:Taxon.dwc:phylum{encode=quotes}')>0,'%xmp:dwc:Taxon.dwc:phylum{encode=quotes}',iif(length('%xmp:dwc:Taxon.dwc:kingdom{encode=quotes}')>0,'%xmp:dwc:Taxon.dwc:kingdom{encode=quotes}',''))))))); %/code|%xmp:photoshop:Headline{encode=quotes} %yyyy%mm%dd%hh%nn%ss%zzz %FileName.%FileExtension

While this script works really well for me (thank you Hert for adding such advanced functionality in PhotoSupreme to support custom sorting), it can be slow to sort large photo sets. For example, on my quite old i7 laptop, it takes about 30 seconds to sort 600 photos in my custom way. In my normal photo sets of under 60 photos, this custom sort is only a couple of seconds so not an issue. You just need to ensure sensible filtering is in place before opening a potentially large photo set.

I hope this helps and is useful. Even though I do not generally know scientific names, I am still happy with my decision to catalogue based on scientific names.

[Roman]

Thanks again, it is good when you can reap the benefits of someone else's hard work
I will give the scripts a go, though understanding their syntax is worse than coming to grips with scientific notation.
Roman