Configuration file

The configuration file is usually located in ~/.config/metaindex.conf. An example of the configuration file is provided in the dist directory. The syntax of the file is:

[Category]
option = value

There are several categories in the configuration file, the possible options are described after this list:

• [General], general options

• [Synonyms], synonyms for tag names

• [Include], additional configuration files that have to be included

General

cache

The location of the cache file. Defaults to ~/.cache/metaindex/index.db.

recursive-extra-metadata

When looking for sidecar metadata files (see Extra Metadata), also look in all parent directories for metadata. Defaults to yes.

This is useful when the file is collection/part/file.jpg but the metadata file is collection/.metadata.json (and in this metadata file the reference is made to part/file.jpg).

collection-metadata

Some sidecar files can define metadata that applies to the entire collection of files in that directory. This options controls what files may define that type of metadata. Based on the available metadata storage modules (e.g. JSON, and OPF) these names are extended by the corresponding file extensions. Defaults to .metadata, metadata.

That means, with JSON and OPF enabled, that the metadata files .metadata.json, .metadata.opf, metadata.json, metadata.opf are considered.

See below in Extra Metadata for more details.

ignore-dirs

What folders (and their subfolders) to ignore entirely. One folder per line. Defaults to .git, .svn, .hg, .bzr, .stfolder, System Volume Information, __MACOSX.

You can use unix-style path patterns, like _tmp*.

ignore-files

What files to ignore entirely. One file name pattern per line. The default is: *.aux, *.toc, *.out, *.log, *.nav, *.exe, *.sys, *.bat, *.ps, *.sh, *.fish, *~, *.swp, *.bak, *.sav, *.backup, *.old, *.old, *.orig, *.rej, tags, *.log, *.a, *.out, *.o, *.obj, *.so.

accept-files

What files to consider. One file name pattern by line, like *.doc.

If you define this, no other files are indexed and ignore-files will not be used.

By default this is left empty and instead ignore-files is used.

index-unknown

Whether or not to add files to the index for which no meaningful metadata could be extracted from the indexers or any sidecar files.

Defaults to yes.

ignore-tags

What (automatically extracted) tags to not add to the cache and thus prevent them being searchable. Comma-separated list of the tags. Defaults to: Exif.Image.StripByteCounts, Exif.Image.StripOffsets.

ignore-indexers

A comma separated list of indexers by name that you do not want to use. By default this list is empty.

Run metaindex --list to see what indexers will be used by default.

preferred-sidecar-format

What file format you prefer for sidecar files. This is the file format that will be used by metaindex and other tools when you add/edit metadata sidecar files. Defaults to: .json

Other options are .opf and .yaml (if you installed the YAML dependencies).

mimetypes

If you have additional mimetypes that you would like metaindex to know, this is the option you can use to point to additional mimetype files. To add multiple files, separate them by a newline. No matter what files you provide here, you system’s mimetype file will always be used.

ocr

Whether or not OCR (optical character recognition) should be enabled. For this to work you must have installed the ocr requirements.

This option can be set to yes to enable OCR for everything, but you can also fine-tune it by setting the option to a list of mimetypes, file suffices, or names of indexers that are allowed to run OCR. For example ocr = .pdf, image/, epub will enable OCR for all .pdf files, all mimetypes that are of the image/* type, and for the indexer named epub.

Beware that the ocr option alone will not extract the full text of images or scanned PDFs (but it will attempt to determine the language; however the result might be just plain wrong).

If you just want to disable OCR entirely, set the value to no (which is the default).

fulltext

Whether or not to extract the fulltext of documents.

For images (and scanned PDFs), this requires OCR to be enabled, too.

This option can be set to yes to enable fulltext extraction for every file type, but you can also fine-tune the setting exactly the same way as the ocr option. For example, if you wanted to only do fulltext extraction of PDFs and images, you would use ocr = .pdf, image/.

The default is no, so no fulltext will be extracted.

Synonyms

Some metadata fields have less convenient names than others, but might semantically be the same. For example, Xmp.xmp.CreatorTool and pdf.Creator both mean “The program that was used to create this file”.

For convenience it is possible to define synonyms, so you only have to search for author when you mean to search for id3.artist, pdf.Author, or Exif.Image.Artist.

The section [Synonyms] in the configuration file is the place to define these synonyms. Here are the defaults, that you don’t have to set up:

[Synonyms]
author = extra.author, extra.artist, id3.artist, pdf.Author, Exif.Image.Artist
title = extra.title, id3.title, pdf.Title, Xmp.dc.title, extra.opf.title
tags = extra.tags, pdf.Keywords, pdf.Categories, Xmp.dc.subject, extra.subject, pdf.Subject, opf.subject, extra.opf.subject
language = opf.language, pdf.Language, Xmp.dc.language, extra.language, extra.opf.language
series = extra.series
series_index = extra.series_index

Include

You can include additional configuration files (for example to split up your configuration into multiple files).

All the name = path entries in the [Include] section will be loaded in the alphabetical order of the names.

In this example ~/.metaindex.conf will be loaded and then /tmp/metaindex.conf. Both of course only after the main configuration file:

[Include]
xtra = /tmp/metaindex.conf
extra = ~/.metaindex.conf

Additional [Includes] in these included configuration files are ignored though.