Tag vs. Album (was Re: Album Support)

[Daniel Köb <dkoeb ist tugraz at>]

Am 29.08.2006 um 15:42 schrieb Warren Baird:

> John Stowers wrote:
> > Please share your thoughts about Albums and Collections
>
> You described what you mean by 'Collection' pretty well in your email,
> but I'm still a little confused about that you consider an 'Album'.
>  From what you've described, an 'Album' sounds exactly like a 'Tag'  
> does
> to me - a named set of photos.   I haven't had a chance to look at  
> your
> patch, so maybe it's more clear there, but I think it might be useful
> for you to define exactly what you consider an 'Album' to be.

Hi Warren and everyone else,

I do not completely share your view of tags. To me a tag is an  
attribute assigned to one or more photos. F-Spot's capability to view  
a set of photos with the same attribute does not really change this.
On the other hand an Album (for me) is a collection of photos.  
Personally I think of a book containing photos if I hear the word  
(photo) album.
So in my understanding there are two major differences between tags  
and albums: (1) tags are assigned to photos whereas a photo is  
assigned to an album and (2) photos in an album should have a  
designated order whereas viewing a collection of photos with the same  
tag does not need a designated order of the photos.

Let me elaborate a little bit more on these two issues:

(1)
I think F-Spot does a *very* good job on tags. The difference to  
albums is more or less a user interface problem: how does a user add  
a photo to an album and is he allowed to add a photo to more than one  
album at the same time. If a photo may be added to more than one  
album at the same time then this should be visible somehow in the  
user interface otherwise it may confuse users (happened to me with OS  
X's address book and its groups...).

(2)
What I expect from an album is the possibility to freely arrange  
photos instead of sticking with a time-line view. Especially for  
slideshows and any type of export ordering is a must (IMO).
To stay with the photo album - book analogy, I would see an album as  
a presentation of your photos, prepared to show them to your family  
and friends (here comes the mission statement :-) ), synchronizing  
them with some web service, and burning them on CD/DVD.

It's funny that no one came up with a feature request to freely sort  
photos until now. Well, here it is :-) I can provide more ideas on  
ordering/sorting if required...

Thanks for reading...
Daniel