keyword assignment goes haywire

[PPeter]

After selecting a group and trying to assign one keyword, other keywords get checked off that I did not click on. I end up with a bunch of keywords assigned to a whole group that do not apply.

How can I clear all the keywords from a selection of photographs?

Upon closing iMatch I got the attached error message.

[Mario]

I understand that you have selected multiple files in a file window.
You have assigned keywords where? Keyword Panel? Category Panel? Via Favorites?

You can remove all keywords from a file in the Keyword Panel with the Remove all keywords command in the drop-down menu.
See the Keyword Panel help topic: The Keyword Panel Menu

[PPeter]

Thanks for the advice regarding "Remove all keywords".
I am working in the keyword panel (popped out to a separate monitor) and it continues to give me trouble. I tried changing my mouse but that made no difference.

Example:
I tried adding a child category "NursingHome" to Places|Kitchener by clicking on "Kitchener" in my hierarchical thesaurus. However, after completing that operation, the new child category ends up under the entry above "Kitchener", which is "Guelph", creating Places|Guelph\NursingHome instead of the desired Places|Kitchener|NursingHome.

I am attached the debug log file.

[Mario]

You are creating new entries in your thesaurus. Do you do that directly in the Keyword Panel (in the Thesaurus horizontal scrolling list) or do you use the Thesaurus Manager?

Try to explain it so I can perform the same steps here. Often this helps to find a solution.

Nothing unusual in the log file. You have not installed a dictionary for the The IMatch Spell Checker so IMatch cannot perform spell checking in the Keyword, Metadata or Attribute panels. But that's unrelated to your problem.

[PPeter]

In my attempt to control where in the hierarchy the keyword gets placed, I used the thesaurus columns in the keyword panel (the columns that have square checkboxes in front of each entry).
My second column has a list that includes
---
Guelph
Kitchener
Montreal
----
I click on "Kitchener" to highlight it, right-click to add child element, type "NursingHome" in the dialog box, but then find that "NursingHome" has been placed under "Guelph".  It shows up in the third column when I click on Guelph.


I am afraid I don't understand how to install dictionaries. I downloaded the en-GB dictionary. I read that iMatch looks for the dictionary in the Program Files\photools.com\imatch6\dictionaries directory, but my installation had no "dictionaries" directory there.  I created a "dictionaries" directory there and moved the en-GB folder there, but iMatch still tells me I have no dictionary.

[Mario]

This is how it should look (I have installed multiple languages, you probably only need one):



I tried your steps (using the default thesaurus that comes with IMatch).

1. I select [Science and Technology] on the first level
2. I right-click on "Computers and Internet" on the 2nd level.
3. I choose "Add child element" in the menu and enter "PC"

PC shows up as a new child for Computers and Internet on the 3rd level. OK.

I repeat these steps with the Keyword Panel "floating" in a separate window. Also works.

Do yo do anything special?

[PPeter]

Mario,
I do appreciate your prompt attention and support.
The dictionary works fine now. (Previously I had left the dictionary files within the en_GB folder).

As for the child showing up under the wrong parent, (and check boxes misfiring to the one below the one that I clicked on) that is a recent problem that only started a few days ago.  When I first used the database all this worked OK as expected.

I just created a new database now for testing purposes and it is working fine too. 

I am guessing something got corrupted in my first database. I just have no idea how to go about fixing it. Or perhaps it is better to live with it and work around it.

[Mario]

If this suddenly happened out of the blue...did you make changes to your thesaurus before?
What happens if you perform the same operation in the Thesaurus Manager? Does that work?

[PPeter]

Yes, I have been making changes to the thesaurus all the time, adding new keywords as I work to organize and characterize all the photographs in my database.


I keep the keywords panel open all the time to check off the keywords (in the hierarchical thesaurus) that fit each photograph. Opening the Thesaurus Manager to add new keywords takes me just a little bit longer, since that cannot stay open continuously.  The Thesaurus Manager is a good work-around for me to add new keywords - it is working fine.


As for assigning keywords using the checkboxes in the hierarchical thesaurus on the keyword panel, if I click on "Kitchener", then the box below (for "Montreal") gets checked instead. However, it is still "Kitchener" and not "Montreal" that gets entered into the photograph's metadata. Therefore I am learning to work around the checkbox problem too, simply by ignoring what box gets checked.
(When I click on the bottom entry in the list, no boxes get checked, but again the bottom entry keyword does get entered into the metadata).

[Mario]

Very strange
Are you using any kind of special monitor? Super-High DPI settings? An unusual graphic card?
Have you tried just to resize the Metadata Panel a bit, maybe this shuffles things in place...

[PPeter]

I had been running the iMatch trial version on a laptop, and then got an i5 desktop with integrated graphics but supporting 3 monitors (24" Samsung LCD, Syncmaster SA650, portrait mode) to run the licensed iMatch version. 

Now I connected the external hard drive with the photo database back to the laptop, to check if the hardware makes a difference.  However, I found the same problems on the laptop (with a smaller keywords panel). Therefore, I still assume I corrupted something in my database.

Perhaps I should make a new database. The beauty of storing keywords in the metadata is that all that information should still be there, even if I discard the old database.  (I will just need to get a little better at using iMatch first.)

[Mario]

The thesaurus is just a tiny part of the database.

Maybe try this:

1.  In the Thesaurus Manager, export the thesaurus to a file. ZIP and attach or send to my support email support email address.
If this strange behavior is somehow related to your thesaurus, I can find out.

2.  Delete all entries from your thesaurus (select the top-level entry and press <Del>.

3. Save with OK and restart IMatch.

4. Open the Thesaurus Manager again and re-import your thesaurus from the file produced in step 1.

[PPeter]

Exporting, deleting and re-importing the Thesaurus resulted in the same errors I was getting before.
Deleting the thesaurus again and then re-creating the thesaurus from scratch eliminated the errors. It is working fine now.
So it does look like the problem was in the thesaurus before. I think I will export good copies every so often, so if it ever happens again then I will have a valid thesaurus to fall back on.


Thanks Mario for your help.

[Mario]

As far as I can remember, this is a unique case.