• filetag.py
  • Why
  • Usage
  • Bonus: integrating into Geeqie (or similar file browsers)
  • Bonus: Using tags to specify a sub-set of photographs
• Related tools and workflows
• Contribute!

## Time-stamp: <2014-11-08 14:10:14 vk> ## -- coding: utf-8 -- ## This file is best viewed with GNU Emacs Org-mode: http://orgmode.org/

filetag.py

This Python script adds or removes tags to file names in the following form:

2013-05-09 a file name with ISO date stamp in name -- tag1.jpg
different file without time stamp in name -- tag2.txt
2013-05-09T16.17 file name with time stamp -- tag3.csv
file name with several tags -- tag1 tag2.jpeg
another example file name with multiple example tags -- fun videos kids.mpeg

The script accepts an arbitrary number of files (see your shell for possible length limitations).

• Target group: users who are able to use command line tools and who are using tags in file names.
• Hosted on github: https://github.com/novoid/filetag

Why

Besides the fact that I am using ISO dates and times in file names (as shown in examples above), I am using tags with file names. To separate tags from the file name, I am using the separator ~ – ~ (space dash dash space).

For people familiar with Regular Expressions:

(<ISO date/time stamp>)? <descriptive file name> -- <list of tags separated by spaces>.extension

Tagging files this way requires a file renaming process. Adding (or removing) tag(s) to a set of file results in multiple renaming processes. Despite advanced renaming tools like vidir (from moreutils) it's handy to have a tool that makes adding and removing tags as simple as possible.

You may like to add this tool to your image or file manager of choice. I added mine to geeqie which is my favorite image viewer on GNU/Linux.

Usage

filetag.py --tag foo a_file_name.txt

… adds tag "foo" such that it results in a_file_name -- foo.txt

filetag.py -i *.jpeg

… interactive mode: asking for list of tags (for the JPEG files) from the user

filetag.py --tag "foo bar" "file name 1.jpg" "file name 2 -- foo.txt" "file name 3 -- bar.csv"

… adds tag "foo" such that it results in …

"file name 1 -- foo bar.jpg"
"file name 2 -- foo bar.txt"
"file name 3 -- bar foo.csv"

filetag.py --remove --tag foo "foo a_file_name -- foo.txt"

… removes tag "foo" such that it results in foo a_file_name.txt

For a complete list of parameters, please try:

filetag.py --help

Bonus: integrating into Geeqie (or similar file browsers)

I am using geeqie for browsing/presenting image files. After I mark a set of images for adding one or more tags, I just have to press t and I get asked for the tags. After entering the tags and RETURN, the tags are added to the image files. With T I can remove tags accordingly.

Using GNU/Linux, this is quite easy accomplished. The only thing that is not straight forward is the need for a wrapper script. The wrapper script does provide a shell window for entering the tags.

vk-filetag-interactive-adding-wrapper-with-gnome-terminal.sh looks like:

#!/bin/sh

/usr/bin/gnome-terminal \
    --geometry=73x5+330+5  \
    --tab-with-profile=big \
    --hide-menubar \
    -x /home/vk/src/filetag/filetag.py --interactive "${@}"

#end

vk-filetag-interactive-removing-wrapper-with-gnome-terminal.sh looks like:

#!/bin/sh

/usr/bin/gnome-terminal \
    --geometry=73x5+330+5  \
    --tab-with-profile=big \
    --hide-menubar \
    -x /home/vk/src/filetag/filetag.py --interactive --remove "${@}"

#end

In $HOME/.config/geeqie/applications I wrote two desktop files such that geeqie shows the wrapper scripts as external editors to its image files:

$HOME/.config/geeqie/applications/add-tags.desktop looks like:

[Desktop Entry]
Name=filetag
GenericName=filetag
Comment=
Exec=/home/vk/src/misc/vk-filetag-interactive-adding-wrapper-with-gnome-terminal.sh %F
Icon=
Terminal=true
Type=Application
Categories=Application;Graphics;
hidden=false
MimeType=image/*;video/*;image/mpo;image/thm
Categories=X-Geeqie;

$HOME/.config/geeqie/applications/remove-tags.desktop looks like:

[Desktop Entry]
Name=filetag
GenericName=filetag
Comment=
Exec=/home/vk/src/misc/vk-filetag-interactive-removing-wrapper-with-gnome-terminal.sh %F
Icon=
Terminal=true
Type=Application
Categories=Application;Graphics;
hidden=false
MimeType=image/*;video/*;image/mpo;image/thm
Categories=X-Geeqie;

In order to be able to use the keyboard shortcuts t (adding tags) and T (removing tags), you can define them in geeqie:

1. Edit > Preferences > Preferences … > Keyboard.
2. Scroll to the bottom of the list.
3. Double click in the KEY-column of filetag and filetag-remove and choose your desired keyboard shortcut accordingly.

I hope this method is as handy for you as it is for me :-)

Bonus: Using tags to specify a sub-set of photographs

You know the problem: got back from Paris and you can not show 937 image files to your friends. It's just too much.

My solution: I tag to define selections. For example, I am using sel for the ultimate cool photographs using filetag, of course.

Within geeqie, I redefined S (usually mapped to "sort manager") to an external shell script (below) which creates a temporary folder (within /tmp/), symbolic links to all photographs of the current folder that contain the tag sel, and start a new instance of geeqie.

In short: after returning from a trip, I mark all "cool" photographs within geeqie, choose t and tag them with sel (described in previous section). For showing only sel images, I just press S in geeqie and instead of 937 photographs, my friends just have to watch the best 50 or so. :-)

The script vksel.sh looks like this:

#!/bin/sh

TMPDIR="/tmp/imageselection"
IMAGEDIR="${1}"
IMAGEVIEWER="geeqie"
FILENAME=$(basename $0)

print_usage()
{
        echo
        echo "usage:   ${FILENAME} <directory>"
        echo 
        echo "... starts a image viewer containing files tagged with \"sel\" in the current" 
        echo "folder or the folder given as parameter 1."
        echo
}

STARTDIR=`pwd`

if [ "x${IMAGEDIR}" = "x-h" -o "x${IMAGEDIR}" = "x--help" ]; then
    print_usage
    exit 0
fi

if [ "x${IMAGEDIR}" = "x" ]; then
    IMAGEDIR="${STARTDIR}"
fi

if [ ! -d ${IMAGEIDIR} ]; then
    echo
    echo "  Please specify a folder containing the <directory>."
    echo
    print_usage
    exit 1
fi


## remove (old) TMPDIR if exists:
test -d "${TMPDIR}" && rm -rf "${TMPDIR}"

## create fresh TMPDIR
mkdir "${TMPDIR}"
cd "${TMPDIR}"


find "${IMAGEDIR}" -name '* -- *sel*' -print0 | xargs -0 -I {} ln -s {} . --
${IMAGEVIEWER}

cd "${STARTDIR}"

#end

Integration in geeqie is done with $HOME/.config/geeqie/applications/show-sel.desktop

[Desktop Entry]
Name=show-sel
GenericName=show-sel
Comment=
Exec=/home/vk/bin/vksel.sh
Icon=
Terminal=true
Type=Application
Categories=Application;Graphics;
hidden=false
MimeType=image/*;video/*;image/mpo;image/thm
Categories=X-Geeqie;

Related tools and workflows

This tool is part of a tool-set which I use to manage my digital files such as photographs. My work-flows are described in this blog posting you might like to read.

In short:

For tagging, please refer to filetag and its documentation.

See date2name for easily adding ISO time-stamps or date-stamps to files.

For easily naming and tagging files within file browsers that allow integration of external tools, see appendfilename (once more) and filetag.

Moving to the archive folders is done using move2archive.

Having tagged photographs gives you many advantages. For example, I automatically choose my desktop background image according to the current season.

Files containing an ISO time/date-stamp gets indexed by the filename-module of Memacs.

Contribute!

I am looking for your ideas!

If you want to contribute to this cool project, please fork and contribute!