Allow disabling of Hiding TZO feature

Started by sdb, July 24, 2023, 02:34:09 PM

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sdb

IMatch automatically hides Time Zone Offsets (TZOs) in the MD panel for Create Date and Date Subject Created to improve readability.  This is causing me problems, and I would like the ability to disable this feature for the following reasons:

1 See Axel's post #6 in https://www.photools.com/community/index.php/topic,13225.0.html
Quote#01836: I'm not sure if I really want to have this. If the time-zone offset is always shown, I can clearly spot if a file has a time-zone applied or not. Right now, I see in the metadata-panel if I missed to apply a time-zone to a file. After that change, this is not that obvious (I would like to have time-zones applied to all my files).
I agree 100%

2 If you're interested in seeing TZOs, selectively hiding them does not make the panel more readable.  Invisible = Unreadable.  On average almost none of my photos were taken on the day I look at them in iMatch, so why do I care about what the local TZO is today?  But I have to keep thinking about it so I can understand what I am looking at.

3 A photo with no TZO does not display a TZO until you click in the field, and then it shows the current local TZO (possibly because of #01790).  This makes it indistinguishable from a photo which already has metadata containing the current TZO.

4 A photo taken in Berlin in February has a hidden TZO because I am looking at it in London in July.  How is that not confusing?

5 If I look at the same photo one week the metadata display may differ from what I see the next week (if DST starts or stops in the intervening period). Not helpful.

6 Even if you are confused by seeing TZOs, this feature is of limited value.  Even assuming all your photos were taken in your home time zone, about half of them on average will show TZOs because of DST.  (And this half will change during the course of the year.)

These problems would be solved if we could have a setting that overrides the default of selectively hiding TZOs, so the CD and DSC fields in the metadata panel always show accurately the contents of these fields.

axel.hennig

Quote from: sdb on July 24, 2023, 02:34:09 PM4 A photo taken in Berlin in February has a hidden TZO because I am looking at it in London in July.  How is that not confusing?
That's an interesting point.

I fully agree. I would also like to have the ability to always see all TimeZones.

sinus

I fully agree also. 
Reading now a lot of the help-system, it confuses me much more, instead of make it easy to read, that the TZO is now hidden, if it matches the local time zone.
And additionally it relaxes me a lot more, if I can see the time zone offset. 

Specially because the date/time is a complicated stuff, I would like to see as many information as possible. 
Just my 2cents.
Best wishes from Switzerland! :-)
Markus


Mario

Quote from: Bolitho on July 24, 2023, 08:09:08 PM+1
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Mario

I have implemented this change, because some good arguments were provided.
By default, time zone offsets are hidden when they match the local time zone offset, but there is now an option to force the Metadata Panel to always show time zone offsets.
See release note #1985.
-- Mario
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