Commons:ComeOn!
ComeOn! is a free tool for importing jpeg-pictures or sound clips to Wikimedia Commons. It is able to extract pieces of metadata from picture files to insert them into the file description in Commons. It is also able to fetch metadata from an external file.
You may use ComeOn! when :
- You have a lot of pictures to upload and you don’t want to lose time on the Upload Wizard.
- You want to add rich descriptions and categories to your files without editing them one by one in Commons.
- You already described your pictures in your editing software (Lightroom, etc.)
- You want to fetch information about your files from an external catalog, like a museum’s catalog extract.
User guide
[edit]Prerequisites
[edit]ComeOn! may be launched on a computer (Windows, Linux or macOS) where Java 8 or more for 64 bit architecture is installed. It relies on Java Web Start (fr,de) which is installed with Java.
ComeOn! only supports format JPEG format for pictures. Picture metadata are extracted by the Metadata Extractor library by Drew Noakes, in the limits that this library supports by itself.
External metadata may be read from a CSV file with fine format tweaks.
ComeOn! uses templates to generate the file description pages. You will have to prepare at least one template before you begin uploading files. You may find a set of basic templates on Github that you may download and extract to your computer.
 | You may have to approve security warnings about code signing. Before first launch, it is required to add ComeOn!'s site to Java's exceptions list. Follow the procedure on Oracle's site to add this URL: "https://edouardhue.github.io/". |
Launching
[edit]Follow this link to launch ComeOn!.
At this point, you have no other choice than configuring or leaving the program. To configure, open the Edit ▸ Options menu or click the Options button in the toolbar.
Options
[edit]The options windows is used to set the models for the generation of the description pages of the pictures (Options ▸ Templates tab) and the accounts used to connect to the wikis (Options ▸ Wikis tab). To use ComeOn!, you need to configure at least one template and a wiki.
 | Changes made in the options window are only saved when you click the OK button. The Cancel button cancels all changes made this the window was opened. |
Templates
[edit]A template is a file, in a specific templating language, used by ComeOn! to generate the description page of each uploaded media file. As of today, ComeOn! supports only one templating language: Velocity.
== {{int:filedesc}} ==
{{Information
| Description = {{mld
| en = $Iptc.CaptionAbstract
}}
| Source = {{own}}
| Date = $date
| Author = $user.displayName ([[User:$user.login]])
| Permission = {{cc-by-sa-4.0|$user.displayName}}
}}
#if ($GPS.GPSVersionID == "2.200")
#parse ("includes/gps.vm")
#end
Before adding templates to ComeOn!, these one must be put on your computer, at the location you like. ComeOn! is delivered without any template but you may download a few ones from Github and use them as an inspiration.
To add a template to ComeOn!, click on the Options ▸ Templates ▸ Add button.
ComeOn! displays the template configuration window. On this screen capture, the form is already filled with example values.
| Field | Usage |
|---|---|
| Name | Name of the template for ComeOn! to display |
| Description | Helper information to describe the content of the template. |
| Location | Select the location of the template file on your computer. |
| Charset | Character encoding to be used by ComeOn! to read the template file. |
| Kind | The templating engine to use with this model. Only Velocity is supported at the moment. |
| If you move the template file after adding it to ComeOn!, you must change its location in ComeOn! too. |
| If you don’t know which charset to use, UTF-8 is a common choice. If you choose a bad value, soome invalid characters may appear in the generated pages. |
Templates ▸ Edit and Templates ▸ Remove buttons are used to change the settings for a template or to remove it from the list.
| Removing a template does not delete it from your computer. |
Wikis
[edit]You may configure ComeOn! to upload files to several wikis. Commons is mostly used amongst the Wikimedia projects but ComeOn! supports any recent Mediawiki instance. To make things easier, Wikimedia Commons is pre-configured in ComeOn!, you only have to set your credentials.
To set your Commons credentials, open the Options ▸ Wikis window, select the Commons entry from the list and click the Edit button. On first launch, only the two first fields are set, you need to set the remaining three.
| Field | Usage |
|---|---|
| Name | The name of the wiki, used by ComeOn! for display |
| Description | Reminder to describe the wiki. |
| Display name | The full text name you want to use in this wiki, in attributions for example. |
| Login | The login you use to connect to this wiki. |
| Password | The password of your wiki account. |
| Depending on your operating system, your password might be stored in clear text on the hard drive. Be careful if you share your computer. |
| If you set a wrong password, ComeOn! could have your account locked down when attempting to connect too many times. Don’t forget to change your password in ComeOn! |
Adding a wiki works the same way, only add a name and description.
You may remove the wikis you don’t need anymore from the list.
A star identifies the active wiki. Only one wiki may be active at a time. The active wiki settings are used when generating description pages and uploading. Don’t use the wrong wiki!
| ComeOn! remembers the active wiki between launches. |
Once you have set your templates and credentials, click OK to save your options.
Uploading pictures
[edit]As soon as templates and wikis are set up, a button becomes active in the toolbar of the main window. The .svg){kind=icon}
button is used to upload images. The same operation may be reached with the File ▸ Open media menu or by dragging and dropping files in the main window.
ComeOn! displays the media selection window below:
If you drag and drop files, they are directly listed in the window. Else, click the Pick… button to open a file chooser and select the media to upload. Then choose a template in the dropdown list and click OK to open the selected files.
| ComeOn! is regularly used to upload a few dozens of files. We are interested in feedback for batches of hundreds or thousands of files. |
Using external metadata
[edit]ComeOn! can read information from an external CSV file, match it with selected and insert it into the description page. This chapter is about the way ComeOn! matches external file data with media; see next chapter about the way to insert this information into the description pages.
| This feature may be useful when you have a discrete metadata catalog of a set of media, like when preparing a GLAM mass-upload. You may then insert directly information from the catalog into each media's description page. |
This features activates with a click of the Use external metadata checkbox in the media selection dialog.
Choose the metadata file with a click of the Pick… button. The next dialog sets tweaks the precise file format.
| Field | Usage |
|---|---|
| Separator | Character used to separate fields – usually a comma or a semicolon. |
| Quote | An optional character used to quote fields – usually a straight double quotation mark. |
| Escape | Character preceding other special characters to avoid them being interpreted as such – usually a backslash. |
| Lines to skip | Number of lines to be ignored at the beginning of the file, if these are plain text comments as an example. |
| Strict quoting | When this checkbox is ticked, ComeOn! ignores all text outside of quotes. |
| Ignore leading white space | ComeOn! ignores all blank characters at the beginning of fields. |
| Charset | Select the charset that what used to save the file. |
| ComeOn! always assumes that the first line of content lists the name of the columns. |
| Supported charsets are those of the java.io API of the Java platform installed into your computer. For information, one may read the list of charsets supported by Java. |
One need to specify how to match each line of the metadata file with a media, using the Match fields. For each media, ComeOn! extracts information from the file, using the expression from the right field, and searches for a match in the column chosen in the left field.
| The expression to select information from the media applies to any metadata extracted from EXIF or audio headers, or the special keyword file.name. One indicates the name of the EXIF block followed by a period and the name of the field to select a piece of metadata. As an example, for the field ObjectName of the Iptc block, one writes Iptc.ObjectName. |
| It’s not easy to remember the names of EXIF fields and blocks. As you’ll see later, ‘ComeOn!’ can list all the metadata for an image, which will help you identify the name of the field and block containing the information you’re interested in. |
By default, ComeOn! searches for an exact match, but the information extracted from the image can be modified using the “'Regular Expression”' and “'Substitution”' fields. When images are opened, ComeOn! performs the following operations, in this order:
- Extraction of the metadata specified by the expression on the right entered in “Correspondance”.
- Apply the regular expression to this value.
- Construct a new value by inserting the groups collected in the previous step into the string entered in Substitution.
- Exact search for this new value in the selected column in Correspondance.
| The regular expressions are those of the Java platform installed on your system, in all their power and complexity. |
| Input channel | Expression | Substitution | Result | Explanation |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mobeye-ÉtéDesVilles-Veyrines-de-Domme-210.jpg | .* | ${0} | Mobeye-ÉtéDesVilles-Veyrines-de-Domme-210.jpg | The entire input string is returned unchanged. |
| Mobeye-ÉtéDesVilles-Veyrines-de-Domme-210.jpg | (.*?)\.jpg | ${1} | Mobeye-ÉtéDesVilles-Veyrines-de-Domme-210 | The expression selects the part of the file name preceding the extension within a group. The substitution retains only this group. |
| Mobeye-ÉtéDesVilles-Veyrines-de-Domme-210.jpg | Mobeye-ÉtéDesVilles-(.*?)-(\d+)\.jpg | ${2}_${1} | 210_Veyrines-de-Domme | The expression ignores the first two parts of the name and selects the last two parts into two groups. The substitution preserves these two groups by reversing their order. |
Preparing the description pages
[edit]Once the images have been opened, the main window is divided into three sections. At the bottom, a strip displays thumbnails of the images, like a roll of film. Clicking on a thumbnail selects a particular image. The left-hand panel displays a larger thumbnail of the selected image and the list of metadata contained in the file. Finally, the main panel contains, in two tabs, the template text and the text for the future description page of the selected image.
You can make adjustments to the templates and description pages before uploading your images. When you make a change in the Modèle tab, it is automatically applied when you return to the tab Contenu de la page.
| If you make a change in the tab Contenu de la page, then another one on the tab Modèle, the page change will be overridden by the template change. |
Inserting the image meta-data (EXIF) into the description pages
[edit]You can use all the metadata contained in an image to build its description page. To do this, you need to insert this information into the template using the template language’s specific syntax. For example, with a Velocity template, to insert the value of the ObjectName field from the Iptc EXIF block, you would write $Iptc.ObjectName in the template.
| In the left-hand panel, below the image preview, ComeOn! lists the data read from each field in every EXIF block. |
Inserting meta-data stored in an external file
[edit]If you have linked your images to an external data file, you can insert this information in the same way as EXIF metadata. The external information is grouped in the $external block, which appears at the bottom of the left-hand panel. For example, if your file contains a column named city, you can insert the value found on the row associated with the current image using the expression $external.city.
Uploading the images
[edit]Click the button .svg){kind=icon}
or via the Fichier ▸ Téléverser les images menu to start uploading all images currently open on the active wiki. ComeOn! will ask you to confirm your action and then display the upload progress window. This window shows the percentage of each file that has been transferred, as well as the overall progress of the upload.
ComeOn! transfers two files at a time to make the best use of bandwidth. Transfers start one after the other until the list is complete. If a file transfer fails, the software reports the error and moves on to the next file. The Stop button interrupts the current transfer.
| Stopping the upload does not undo any actions that have already been carried out. A file that was successfully uploaded before the upload was stopped will therefore remain published on the wiki. |
Once the transfer is complete, click OK to close the progress window. The main screen displays a coloured border around the transferred images in the bottom bar:
| Colour | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Green | The file transfer was successful. |
| Red | The transfer failed and can be attempted again. |
| White | The transfer has not started and will take place the next time the process is triggered. |
| Until all files are marked as successful, you can initiate a new transfer. ComeOn! will only transfer the remaining files and will not resend those that have already been successfully transferred. |
