Re: Goal #3: item 'Photos dir'

[Stephane Delcroix <stephane delcroix org>]

Hi Dotan and all,

I agree on almost all your views, but as Bengt already said, it's a bit
out of the scope of the item named 'rename Photos directory and make it
selectable by the commandline'.
Not to say that we won't implement your ideas, but that we can't
implement/test/discuss in the time window we fixed for this goal. When
discussing goal items, keep focus on the subject.

Can you please open a bug with all your great ideas to make f-spot
multi-albums (UI, import, merge, how to share tags) ? Could be very
useful to avoid loosing all this.

About having F-Spot multi-album, I vote for it. Not to split my
collection, but more to be able to import a full collection at a time,
etc...

The only thing I don't like in your propositions is the druid at first
startup to asks the user about his prefered location for pictures and so
on. F-Spot should work as-is for my mom (in fact, my mum doesn't use
f-spot, she asks for printed shots) and displaying a druid at first run
will trouble and frighten some users. And more, the user doesn't have to
choose where to put the db because the user doesn't have to know that
F-Spot uses a db (at least, at the first approach for average users).
So, a default location for both Photos and photos.db is not bad at all,
esp if the user can change it later. And this will not screw an existing
Photos directory, you can always remove picture from drive...
But all this paragraph has nothing to do here, but in the bug entry you
will open soon ;)

Thanks Dotan for your ideas and opinions, and please discuss mines...

Stephane


On Wed, 2006-08-23 at 21:57 +0300, Dotan Cohen wrote:
> On 16/08/06, Ben Monnahan <monnahan gmail com> wrote:
> > Hi again :)
> >
> > > > Don't we want to make paths relative to Photos?  So that users can
> > > > move it around as neccesary? Again, should we move the current Photos
> > > > there if it doesn't already exist?
> > >
> > > Is it the point of this part of the goal? did I misunderstood
> > > something ? Correct me if I'm wrong, but the initials bugs entry and
> > > patches were to whange the default directory where f-spot *imports*
> > > picture when you select 'copy' or import directly from the camera.
> > >
> > > Having all path relative to the Photos directory will break the actual
> > > logic of f-spot.  As a remember, now, you can import picture without
> > > copying them in ~/Photos, so f-spot is able to handle images outside the
> > > Photos directory.
> > >
> > > Moving and re-organizing images is (again, correct me if I'm wrong) the
> > > subject of another enhancement proposal.
> >
> > Entirely correct.  This would be invasive and is way too big of a change for
> > the current goal.
> >
> > > So, in my mind, f-spot will run on one db (do not put the user in
> > > trouble) with a configurable *import* directory, and with a possibility
> > > to run f-spot on a different db (with or without another import
> > > directory) as command line option.
> > >
> > > For me, it's the best way to integrate all the requested features
> > > without breaking the actual logic and users habits.
> >
> > Rethinking it, I think you are right here.  Definitely as a first step this
> > is the way to go.  I'm still concerned about the following usage pattern:
> >
> > Joe Blow hears about F-Spot and decides to give it a try.
> > He imports a bunch of photos and tags them.
> > He realizes he's almost out of space on /home, but has plenty in a separate
> > partition /files
> > He wants to change to have /files/Photos be his new import directory
> > He wants to have all of his photos together for simplicity/backup/etc
> >
> > From what I understand of the current plan, the first photos he imported
> > would stay in ~/Photos, and new imports would go to /files/Photos?  Is this
> > ideal?  What if he is a non-English speaker and Photos doesn't make any
> > sense to him?  Again, this may be something we need to accept giving the 2
> > week constraint, and just having in the ability to change it would be a big
> > step forward.
> >
> > I don't actually import to Photos because I like to leave my photos in
> > directories by event.  Does the case I raise here worry the import to Photos
> > users? Or not?
> >
> > > > My only other thought is, remember the request that the DB be moved
> > > > into Photos?  Is that something we want to consider at this point?  It
> > > > seems the ideal for the multiple albums case as well as the
> > > > portability case.  That way its all stored in one bunch.  If nothing
> > > > else it touches on a lot of the same issues as these bugs, so we
> > > > should probably take it into account with this patch.  Unless we
> > > > decide to discard it.
> > > >
> >
> > This still appeals to me, but is again outside the current goal.
> >
> > Ben
> >
> 
> I'm getting into this a bit late, but this is how I see it:
> I am one of those users where the directory Photos makes no sense- I
> would ideally have my pictures in a directory called תמונות or even
> transliterated to "tmunot". So the renaming of the Photos directory is
> important to me. There could even be a situation where a user has a
> directory called Photos, decides to try out F-spot, and has his Photos
> directory ruined.
> 
> On first run F-spot would ask where does the user want to keep his
> photos. "~/Photos" may well be a default value. The file photos.db
> would be inside this main directory, and this main directory could be
> considered an album.
> 
> If the user wants to add another album, he would click File->New
> Album. The wizard would ask for the new albums' location, which would
> be another directory. Inside that directory would be another photos.db
> file.
> 
> The user would switch albums under File -> Albums -> Home Album, Work
> Album, etc. The user could select files from Album1 and move or copy
> them to Album2. That would solve the problem of a user wanting to move
> his current Photos directory: he could simply create a new album and
> move the pictures there.
> 
> There could even be an Import Album feature where the user selects a
> directory that contains a photos.db file (created by another instance
> of F-spot, say on a laptop, and moved to the local machine) and have
> it added to the list of albums. This would let Joe bring his laptop
> with him on vacation, tag his photos in his spare time, and then
> import them to F-spot. It would also facilitate easy backup.
> 
> As for current F-spot users who have photos.db in the ~/.gnome2/f-spot
> directory, the next few versions of F-spot (until the 1.0 release, for
> instance) could look there for the file, and move it automatically to
> ~/Photos (or whatever other directory was chosen).
> 
> Of course, this is all from an end-user's perspective as the ideal
> solution. The actual programming may be impossible: I am not a
> programmer.
> 
> Thanks for listening. Can't wait to beta-test your patches!
> 
> Dotan Cohen
> http://dotancohen.com
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-- 
Stephane Delcroix
stephane delcroix org