How to handle RAW+JPG?

Question

Hi guys,
Just downloaded LR4 trial, and there is something I can't quite figure out.
I have a lot of RAW+JPG pictures (shot as RAW+JPG or previously converted from RAW to JPG with other programs), when importing them to Lightroom, I can choose to treat them as the same picture or as separate pictures.
At first glance, they should of cause be treated as the same picture (because they are the same picture), and they do indeed appear as "RAW+JPG" in LR, but how do I:
- View the JPG? (not critical, but it would be nice to be able to compare the JPG with the LR results)
- Add metadata (tags, title, caption, etc.) to the JPG file and not just the RAW file? (I have enabled "write metadata to file")
If treated as separate pictures, they behave as one would expect, but it is not that convenient to have two of the same pictures side-by-side.
- Can I auto-stack RAWs and JPGs?
- Can I write metadata (tags, title, caption, etc.) to the entire stack in one go?
And please don't give me the same answer, I keep reading over and over again, when other people ask the same question: "Why would you have RAW and JPG of the same image?" That is not the question, but I will answer it anyway :-)
1. I need JPG versions of my pictures for e-mail, web, viewing on my TV etc.
2. I REALLY don't want to be dependent on LR in the future. If I have spend hours and hours fine tuning my pictures, and only have them saved as RAW, I would need LR till the day I die. And it doesn't end there, my kids, my grand kids and so on, would also need LR to view the pictures (at lease in the quality I would like them to be viewed).
~Frank

Answer 1

That was also my feeling, that Lightroom's support for such is pretty little.
Because it is not LR's concept.
Frank,
what you could do in order to further make up your mind to which extent LR might suit you:
Use an alternative picture viewer (e.g. Irfanview) to compare JPGs.
Copy your existing JPGs to a folder, but do not import them into LR (that means do not LR have creating pointers to them and records in the catalog-database).
Import your raws into LR (that means you need to have some safe storage space for the image files themselves), and do your developments there. When you think you are ready, export** them as full-sized JPGs, renamed e.g. by a suffix -LR, into your JPG-folders. Do not add such export to your LR catalog.
Use the alternative picture viewer to compare how you did, compared to your camera's auto-conversion.
To further ease your mind regarding dependancy on LR: most of your develop settings can be written back to the raw file's xmp-part (that is a sidecar-file for a proprietary raw format such as Nikon's .NEF or Canon's .CR2, or embedded for a DNG, PSD or TIFF).
This xmp can be read by many other other programs.
So you would have your raws enriched.
Plus you could decide to store your exported JPGs *forever*.
Pretty independant from Lightroom, no?
Should you want to ultimately rely on raw-conversion results, I would go for different software, e.g. DxO.
Cornelia
**exporting means: LR is making use of its records as rendering instructions and writes a completely new file, in the format you specify for this export, e.g. JPG.
LR is a database, that contains records ABOUT images. It reads from them, it writes to their xmp-part if tell it to do so (choice is continuously or upon separate command for selected images), it can write other output, e.g. a PDF working as a slide show, a web gallery, a print, a book.