Re: importing directories

[David Moore <dcm MIT EDU>]

On Wed, 2005-11-30 at 10:58 -0600, Larry Ewing wrote:
> On Wed, 2005-11-30 at 00:40 -0600, Gabriel Burt wrote:
> > Defaulting it to on is probably a good idea, but saving your preference
> > after the first time is also a good idea.
> 
> It is a potential data loss situation, I'm not sure saving the setting
> is appropriate.  It certainlt needs to be explicit and not implcit that
> the setting is lasting.  Is it really that hard to uncheck the box?  Or
> is it just a pain when combined with the automatic path chosing stuff
> below?

I think the difficulty here stems from the fact that "import" is an
ambiguous term which can be used for two very distinct types of user
interactions:
1) Copying files from removable media onto the local machine.
2) Asking f-spot to catalog a directory that already exists on the local
machine.

These are both necessary features, but have very different effects.  My
suggestion would be to stop using the term "import" completely, and
instead create two dialogs:

The first would be called "Copy files from location..." or something
like that.  The dialog would let you specify a "from" path (or url,
etc.) and a "to" path.  The "to" path would default to ~/Photos.  This
option would simply copy the files and do nothing else.  The dialog
might pop up automatically when removable media is inserted into the
machine.

The second would be called "Directories to monitor...".  This would be a
dialog that contains a user-configurable list of paths (~/Photos by
default) where f-spot should automatically look for new files and import
them into the user interface without requiring user intervention.  It
might also contain a list of "exclude" paths.  This is in the same
spirit as the Picasa interface, which I think is very good.  

Since the "Copy files from location..." dialog will do _only_ a copy, f-
spot will automatically import these copied files assuming you copy them
to a location that is automatically monitored by f-spot.

What do you think of such a user-interface convention?

Regards,

David