On the basis that the purpose of this mailing list is described as
"...for all concerns of a darktable user: usage questions, experience
reports ..."I would like some help understanding import.
I'm failing at the first step: setting the correct parameters in the
session options in preferences. The issue here is that my 'Pictures'
folder is not where DT assumes it to be - somewhere relative to my $Home
folder (more comment on that later). My pictures folder is on an E:
drive because my C-drive is a small SSD which is about 50% of the size
of the Pictures folder. (I wanted to move 'appdata' off the c-drive too,
to avoid so many I/O ops on the SSD but haven't been able to do that). I
need advice on how to correctly set the session options for my
configuration.
Having read section 8.3 (session options) in the DT user manual I
realise that I don't know what 'the home folder as defined by the
system' means. In fact this whole section is written by an IT expert for
an IT expert, not for an enthusiast home photographer who is (now) far,
far from being an IT expert. And an IT expert doesn't need this sort of
information anyway - so who is the target audience for this manual?
What I have discovered, by pressing the 'folder' button in import, is a
window labelled 'import film' ..wait!, what ? Ignoring this confusion I
notice an entry in the last of places in this window which says 'Home'
and sure enough it takes me to C:\Users\<myuserid>\ - where no Pictures
folder exists. So how can DT import images to the default location
$(PICTURES_FOLDER}\Darktable ? And, indeed I find no 'Darktable' folder
within my E:\Pictures folder after an import attempt.
What is one supposed to do with the symbolic addresses, like '$(HOME)'
and '$(PICTURES_FOLDER)' ? Should I replace them with actual addresses,
like 'E:\Pictures', as Bruce Williams suggests in his videos? That
doesn't seem to work either.
How do I find out what 'the home folder as defined by the system' means ?
What doesn't work even more, to my expectation, than the above is my
attempt to import from the SD card taken from my camera: I end up with
a collection which points to an F: drive - the drive letter that is
assigned when a card reader is attached to my system. Naturally then
once the card is returned to the camera, attempts to edit the imported
images fail with an error message telling me that the image is not
available. This is completely different to my expectation: that the
import from an SD card would place a COPY of the image somewhere on my
harddrive and allow me to carry on using the card in the camera. Why
does it not do this in my system?
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