Eog collection suggestions [was Re: [PATCH] EOG Collection]

[Jens Finke <jens triq net>]

Hi Bryan,

sorry for the delay in my reply (have been busy and then forgot about your 
mail :/)

On Thu, 30 Oct 2003, Bryan W Clark wrote:
> IMHO the idea of the collection viewer is to provide a filmstrip /
> slideshow for the user.  I think that in order to design for the
> filmstrip model we can't providing a quick overview of all images at the
> same time; the two design paradigms are mutually exclusive in our
> current view.

Actually I don't see a big problem here. Maybe we can change the
behavior for the collection view to filmstrip mode, if it is used as 
nautilus view. 
 
> [...]
>
> > - With each saving of a jpeg the quality is reduced (lossy format). This 
> > can be avoided if libjpeg is used for lossless transformation of local 
> > jpeg files (which is planned).
> 
> Ok, I wasn't aware of that.  I'm sure you're almost all the way through
> it, you've been making great progress so far.  Once libjpeg is
> incorporated I think an auto-save would _then_ be a good feature to
> add.  Hopefully we can work together on a good way to implement it.

I don't have a clue how to integrate the libjpeg functionality into eog 
nicely yet. There is libeog/eog-image-jpeg.[ch] already, which provides  the 
jpeg saveing functions only at the moment. This is probably the best place 
to add more jpeg specific image functions. 
 
> > - A nice thing in EoG is that you can rotate a large bunch of images in 
> > one run, while only the thumbnail representations are rotated. This is 
> > extremly fast and you get a quick overview if your transformation was 
> > right (eg. I always get horizontal/vertical flipping wrong). If an image is
> - You can undo transformations, without touching the files again.
> 
> I think this is a cool feature, but I wasn't aware of it until I dove
> into the code. 

Yes, the documentation has definitely a lot room for improvements.  
Although there were some updates recently, haven't look at them yet.

> jbut for this feature the usage group of people probably represent a
> significantly small percent of the population of all our users.

But I am in this 'small' group, so the feature will stay :). Maybe there 
is a way to make it more user visible, beside a better documentation.

> Download new photos off their digital camera into directory "my trip"
> Open up nautilus and navigate to "my trip" directory Now switch to
> collection view so that they can show off the pictures from their trip
> to everyone else, narrating each shot as it is in the preview window.  
> If they come across an image that is shot at a different rotation than
> the others they would like to rotate it during their "mini-slideshow"
> and not have to rotate it again when they leave the directory and open
> it up again to show their pictures to someone else.

Your use-case description makes sense. Though the argument of 'don't 
overwrite user-data silently' is a strong one. And eog shouldn't ask the 
user for each image seperately. Therefore I prefer the 'ask user to save 
modified images on exit' method. BTW: Eog remembers the transformation 
state during a session. If you load an image, rotate it, load another one 
and than later the first one again, eog will rotate it for you 
automatically. 

> To throw out an idea to solve the "rotated it the wrong way" situation,
> we could try to implement a high feedback rotation system, similar to
> what the new GIMP does does for image rotation.

Yes, but than you don't have a stateless user interface anymore, which
sucks IMO for a 'simple' image viewer.

> I agree this is a problem, I'm on the GUP team and am working out a spec
> to try to solve this right now.  

Do you have a link for more infos? Never heard of GUP team.

> > - Eog can save only 'png' and 'jpeg' files. If you rotate eg. a gif file 
> > the automatic save will fail.
> 
> I think this is a problem with the EOG save in general and not so much
> with the auto-save idea, I'm sure we can fix this one as well with a
> little hacking. 

Than, go ahead and add saving functionality for all kind of image types to 
gdk-pixbuf (where it belongs). Eog whill pickup these automatically.
 
> > My idea for a better usability on this for 2.6 is:
> > - Visually indicate that an image was modified
> > - Select all modified images with one menu function
> > - Ask the user on close if he want's to save the modifications if there 
> > are any.
> 
> Take a look at the "rotate mode" idea or maybe you can elaborate a
> little more on how this will work visually, as I can't see it.

IMO this is pretty clear, what don't you understand here? 
 
> On close EOG asks the users "You've changed 'pict1454.jpg', do you want
> to save?"  And then again for every image other image that was rotated. 
> I couldn't identify any of the names my camera gives my images and I
> don't rename them since I have too many to do that.  I _can_ remember
> which one I want to rotate when I'm looking at it and see that it's
> wrong.

Well, we can do it better. We have the thumbnails for all the images we 
are showing. So we can show the user the files which changed.
 

Regards,

   Jens