Auto collapse category tree

[Mees Dekker]

I'm heavily relying on the use of categories (over 4500 categories in my database). That makes my tree of categories a very long one and that also makes for a lot of scrolling. Every category (sub) tree remains expanded when a picture is assigned to that particular (sub) tree. It would be very helpful if a subtree could collapse automatically when you go to another subtree.

For instance: I assign a picture to "Persons > family > name". When I then assign the picture to "Object > buildings > churches > modern" the Persons tree remains expanded and that invokes a lot of unnecessary scrolling and slowing down of the workflow.

ACR and Lightroom have the option of having only 1 development (sub)window open (in stead of all).

[JohnZeman]

Why not use the standard Windows shortcut keys to expand and collapse categories and folders?

* Expands a branch fully
CTRL + * collapses a category down to 1 level.

- Collapses the parent category completely but keeps the subcategories open should you open the category again.

So to completely collapse a category branch after you've selected it takes two keyboard shortcuts.

CTRL + *
Followed by
-

[Mario]

And there are of course all the advanced expand & collapse commands: Working with Tree Control Elements

I know you use categories in stead of keywords. Which is fine, but also cuts you off from many of the more sophisticated features (like auto-suggestion etc.) IMatch offers for keywords.

I would also recommend to create some category bookmarks or category favorites which allow you to quickly jump to important anchor categories in your category hierarchy, for a quicker workflow.

[Mees Dekker]

Thanks for these comments, I knew these possibilities.

But they have one thing in common: they require that I scroll up to/select the parent category and then collapse manually (by either using the suggestions of John and/or Mario). As far as I know, it is not possible to collapse "upward", let alone to do that automatically. If I'm mistaken: please let me know.

As for the use of categories: it strikes as somewhat odd to suggest the use of keywords instead. Categories are "one of the core concepts of IMatch" (dixit the Help). That is exactly how I look at them and therefore use them. What I'm suggesting to make this "core concept" a bit more user friendly in order to speed up the workflow.

[Mario]

Yes, categories are one of the core concepts of IMatch. And very powerful and flexible.

And before XMP / Lr introduced usable (not as limited as in legacy IPTC) and hierarchical keywords, they were the best tool that was for 'keywording' files.
Since XMP and hierarchical keywords, I recommend to use keywords for keywording purposes, and categories for all else.

The problem here is that features like suggestions (type a part of a keyword and the Keywords Panel shows all matches to pick from), histories, pick lists etc. makes working with even very large keyword thesauri quite easy and fast. No scrolling around in deep hierarchies, constantly expanding or collapsing thesauri elements.

For categories, there is the search box in the category panel. Which works reasonably well for its intended purposes. It will save lots of scrolling because it reduces the categories you see in the panel greatly after typing or or two characters. It automatically expands and collapses tree items even. And you can link different sections of your category tree into tabs in the category panel, which also helps to quicker find and pick categories.

In your example from above, I would create one tab for "Persons" or "Persons|Family" and one tab for "Object|buildings" or "Objects", depending on the hierarchy size.
This enables you to quickly select Persons and Objects, without the need to scroll or search much. I'm not sure if you use this often overlooked feature?

I could probably implement an "Collapse Up", which collapses the current tree to the next parent? (this is what <Shift>+<Cursor left> does).
Or go to the top level parent under @All / Database and collapse that? Recursively (down) or just that element?
What if you are on Persons|family|name and you collapse up? What would be collapsed? "family" or "Persons" in this case?

I'm just not sure how many users would need this.

[Mario]

I have thought about this and decided to add two additional collapse commands:


The first new command selects the parent of the current item and then collapses it.
|- A
|-b
|..
|..z

If z is selected and you do a "Collapse Parent", A is selected and collapsed.

The second new command (Collapse Up) moves up to the level under the root (top-level folders, top-level categories, ...), selects it and collapses it.

In your example Persons|family|name, when you are on the family or name level and you use "Collapse Up", Persons is selected and collapsed.

[Mees Dekker]

Thank you for this addition. It will be very helpful to speed up the workflow. Looking forward to the next release.