Metadata: Keywords separator character (comma vs semicolon)

[Paul Coddington]

Affinity forces keyword separators to be commas when some schemes use semicolons. Is this a standard that varies automatically by file format or is it user preference?

If it comes down to user preference, then perhaps users should be offered a choice as to which separator is used in Affinity?

[Old Bruce]

Please ignore this bit of useless advice.

Thanks Walt for pointing out my mistake.

Pretty sure we have to choose manually. If it is a *.csv file then it appears to be a comma that is the default choice if it is a *.tsv then it is a tab. I don't knw if the choice we make is "sticky". To the best of my knowledge there is no way of automatically determining what the delimiter is.

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, Old Bruce said:

If it is a *.csv file

The topic is about Metadata, not Data Merge, as I read it.

[Paul Coddington]

Yes, to clarify, the problem is Affinity Photo has the following issues with keywords in metadata:

1. If the keywords are short and comma separated, all is well.
2. If the keywords are semicolon separated, the keyword order is scrambled and the semicolons are replaced with commas.
3. I suspect keywords that contain commas will be split, but I have not tested this.
4. Keywords get truncated to 64 characters, corrupting hierarchical tagging schemes.

So, this is a metadata corruption issue, not just an inability to add metadata in a particular way.

I do not currently know what Designer and Publisher do behind the scenes when opening and saving shared documents (they have no metadata pane, but may still have these problems).

[walt.farrell]

10 minutes ago, Paul Coddington said:

4. Keywords get truncated to 64 characters, corrupting hierarchical tagging schemes.

That one is answered in your other topic.