I use Kubuntu 18.04 which has Gwenview as its image viewer. It's available in the repositories but it may pull in quite a few dependencies if you haven't already installed other qt
-based applications. Run apt install -s gwenview
to see if you're comfortable installing it.
Gwenview doesn't display a text file and the corresponding image together but it has a sidebar in which you can enter a description of your image by typing or pasting content in the Description box.
In the following composite,
- the first image has the description area blank
- the second, third, and fourth images have small descriptions.
Gwenview uses something called "extended file attributes" to store information you enter in the Descriptions box. I learned that here.
If you decide you want to extract all the descriptions, you can. First install xattr from the Universe repository.
Description: tool for manipulating filesystem extended attributes
Then, run
xattr -l *.png
from the folder containing your images, assuming them to be .png.
You'll get a consolidated output like this:
01-default.png: user.xdg.comment: This is the default color scheme of the Ranger file manager.
02-jungle.png: user.xdg.comment: Jungle is another color scheme included when you install Ranger.
03-snow.png: user.xdg.comment: This is snow, the third color scheme included with Ranger.
04-solarized.png: user.xdg.comment: This is solarized. This color scheme isn't included with Ranger.
I haven't addressed the following issues because I don't understand much about extended file attributes myself:
- where this information is stored
- whether the information can be accessed by other programs
- the maximum length of material you can include in the description
but the following links could be of use: