IMatch apps are designed to be responsive and adapt to the current screen resolution. But sometimes this may not be enough, for example, when you want to use very small App Panels to maximize the screen estate available for other panels or the file window. Or when you use IMatch on a small tablet or notebook while on-location.
Scaling
Under Edit > Preferences > Application: User Interface you can control the global scale for information rendered in App Panels. You can reduce or increase the scale in 16 steps between -8 (smaller) and +8 (larger).
Using the Apply button allows you to see the change in all open App Panels immediately. The App Panel on the left uses a scale factor of 0 (default). As you can see, the buttons in the panel need to wrap because the panel width is too small to display them in one row. By reducing the scale factor to -3, the data and control elements fit neatly in the available panel.
Summary
The global scaling for App Panels enables you to size the contents precisely to your requirements and liking.
The ability to export metadata in various formats is a key feature for every digital asset management system. IMatch includes a wide range of export modules which allow you to export attributes, metadata and other data in a variety of formats.
Exporting Metadata and Attributes
This know-how article covers the flexible Text Export module which enables you to create text files in a variety of formats. The export module supports both UTF-8 and UTF-16 (Windows® UNICODE) encoded text, which allows you to create output which works on all platforms and operating systems. IMatch enables you to output virtually every metadata field and Attribute it maintains in the database, ready to imported into other applications and systems.
These output formats are supported:
CSV Files (e.g. for Import into Microsoft® Excel or similar products)
Tab-delimited formats (ideal for many databases)
XML Files (popular cross-platform format)
JSON Files (to process the results in JavaScript or similar)
Each format can be customized to match whatever format the importing application expects. As a result, you can export virtually anything that is stored in your IMatch database conveniently into other applications.
What To Export
You control the data to export via standard IMatch variables, which gives you complete access to all metadata and Attributes IMatch maintains for your files. Using variable formatting functions you can further format and modify the output to meet your requirements.
Each file processed by the export module produces one ‘record’ in the output. The resulting record can have any number of ‘fields’. A field has an (optional) name and a value. The name is plain text and the value is composed from one or more variables and literal text. For example:
FileName:{File.NameExt}
The name of this field is FileName and the value comes from the variable {File.NameExt}, which returns the file name and extension of the file (e.g., beach.jpg). Field name and value are separated by a colon:
To export multiple fields per record, just add additional declarations on additional lines:
This declaration exports 4 fields per record. To keep things tidy, this example uses shortcodes like createdate instead of the long standard variable names. See the IMatch help for details about shortcodes.
Formatting Variables
By default IMatch exports date and time information in your local date&time format (as configured in Windows). This may cause problems when the importing application expects date and time in a specific format.
To prevent any problems in this area, we use the format function together with the createdate variable to produce a date and time format in standard ISO YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS format. This avoids any ambiguities.
IMatch supports dozens of variable formatting functions. Please see the Variables help topic in the IMatch help for a full list and examples.
Tip: Var Toy And Other Helpers
Not only for this case, but in general when you work with variables in IMatch, the Var Toy App can be a big help. This app allows you to enter a mix of literal text and variables and to immediately see the result.
Open an App Panel via View > Panels > App Panel (or <F9>,<1>) and select the Var Toy App in the drop-down list at the top of the App Panel:
The VarToy allows you to interactively try out variables. You can paste variables and text into the upper edit field and the App immediately displays the result. Use the Browse Variables… button to open the standard Variable Browser.
Copy as Variable
The Metadata Panel has a useful command which allows you to copy the corresponding variable for a metadata tag into the clipboard. Right click any caption in the Metadata Panel to open the context menu:
The Copy as Variable command copies the variable for the clicked metadata tag into the Windows Clipboard. From there you can insert it into the VarToy App or into whatever feature you want to use it with.
Running the Text Export
Select the files you want to include in the export and drop them on the Text Export module in the Import & Export Panel. You can also drop one or more folders, categories, collections or time-line nodes.
Drop files or other objects on the Text Export module in the Import & Export Panel
If the panel is not visible, open it via View > Panels > Import & Export or <F9>,<X>.
After you have dropped the objects, the Text Exporter opens a dialog box where you can configure the format and options for the export:
The options in this dialog are mostly self-explanatory. Press <F1> to open the corresponding topic in the IMatch help, which explains each option in detail. The help also contains examples and suggested output formats for a variety or common applications.
We create a standard CSV (comma-separated values) file in this case. Fields are separated with a comma (,) and each row (aka ‘record’) is delimited with a carriage return / line feed pair. This is the format expected by most Windows applications and Office suites.
At the bottom of the dialog you see the field definitions we have defined earlier. We just coped them from the VarToy App into the input field in the Text Export module. You can of course also enter and edit them in this dialog directly.
The Result
After running the export for 3 sample files, we can open the resulting file in Windows Notepad for a quick check:
Or we open it directly in Microsoft® Excel (or Open/Libre Office):
CSV files like this using , ; or <tabulator> as field separators can be imported by most Office applications, statistic software, database systems etc.
XML Output
If you have more sophisticated applications, they often support XML or JSON as an import format. If we run the same export again, but this time switch the output format to XML, we get a result that can be easily re-formatted and imported by a wide range of applications across all platforms:
Note that the only change was switching the output format to XML. Our field definitions are the same as before. The Text Export module automatically used the field names as node names for the XML file and converted the values into proper XML data records.
Summary
The Text Export module in the digital asset management system IMatch is a flexible tool for exporting metadata and Attributes into other applications. It can produce plain text and CSV files, but also more advanced formats like XML and JSON. Using a mix of IMatch variables and text you can control the data you export, and the format in which the data is exported.
Whether you want to reuse data stored in your IMatch database in Excel or a Word Processor or you want to copy data into other database systems, the Text Export module is a great and easy way to handle this.
Keeping track of events is a key feature for digital asset management systems. IMatch automatically maintains a history for each of the files you manage in your database. The history records events like “File added to database”, “File updated”, “File Viewed”, “Metadata changed” and many other event types.
The History Panel
To view the history of a file, open the the History Panel (View Menu > Panels > History or press <F9>,<H>).
The panel lists all events recorded for a file from top to bottom. Icons are used to indicate the different event types, and a textual description gives additional details. For events like file copy or file move, the target of the operation is also recorded. The user column tells you the name of the (Windows) user who created the event in the history.
The History Panel displays the history of the file currently focused file in the active File Window.
Use the context menu to access the commands available in the History Panel. You can purge old events and even add your own events to record information you want to keep in the history.
See the IMatch help on the History Panel for all details.
