Including Comments in Generated Albums
Note: Comments should not be confused with Viewer Remarks. Comments are part of a generated album and are unchangable once an album has been created; viewer remarks are left by the viewers of an album as commentary about the album.
There are two types of comments possible: Slide Image Comments and Folder Comments.
Including Slide Image Comments
The easiest way to create comments to display with an image is via the JAlbum main window; the interface for entering comments is very nice. JAlbum’s documentation for this is here (scroll to near the bottom!).
The JAlbum-Advanced Metadata tab allows the selection of one or more sources for comments. No matter how many of these sources are selected, only one comment will be displayed!
BluPlusPlus supports two additional ways of providing comments:
- a text file containing a comment with a filename in the form ‘image_file_name.txt’ where image_file_name is the filename (without the .jpg or other extension) of an image file within an album folder
- a meta.properties file entry of the form ‘description.image_file_name.ext=comment text’, where image_file_name.ext is the name of a slide image file, with appropriate extension (e.g. .jpg, etc.)
If there are comments provided from more than one source, only one comment will be displayed, with the following precedence:
- Text file (a comments.properties file created by the JAlbum main window)
- JPEG comment (a comment, usually entered by external software, embedded into the image file)
- IPTC Caption (a comment, usually entered by external software, entered into the IPTC Caption field
- EXIF User comment (a comment, usually entered by external software, entered into the EXIF User Comment field)
- EXIF Image Desc. (a comment, usually entered by external software, entered into the EXIF Image Description field)
- ‘image_file_name.txt’ file
- meta.properties file
BluPlusPlus can display comments in any or all of the following locations:
- The separate slide comment section on slide pages
- Below the slide image in Slide Caption Content on slide pages
- Below an image thumbnail on index pages (via the Thumbnail Captions field)
- As a tooltip for an image thumbnail on index pages (via the Thumbnail Tooltips field)
Comments are interpreted as HTML. There are two implications to this:
- one can use HTML to create effects such as bold, italics, color changes, etc.
- use the following special HTML coding in place of the indicated symbols:
use this not this " " & & < < > >
The “Comment:” prefix
When comments are displayed on slide image pages, they are by default preceeded by the prefix “Comment:”. This prefix can be altered or omitted entirely. To do so, edit the appropriate ‘ texts_xx.properties’ file (‘xx’ refers to the two-character language code—for English, edit the ‘texts_en.properties’ file).
Creating Line Breaks within Comments
It is possible to create comments in the following form:
- comment line 1
- comment line 2
- comment line 3
To do this, input the comment as follows: comment line 1 <br> comment line 2 <br> comment line 3
Including Folder Comments
Folder comments entered via the JAlbum main window are treated as ‘footers’ in BluPlusPlus.