Re: Fwd: Album Support

[Warren Baird <photogeekmtl gmail com>]

Ben Monnahan wrote:

> I don't think that has been decided at all.  Yes the different DB/Photos 
> we are calling Libraries or Collections.  Album is still up in the air 
> in my mind.  I see two definitions not counting the first (maybe its so 
> vague that it barely means anything)

True - I probably jumped the gun by saying the album thing is 
approaching consensus...

> That being said, I don't necessarily see why we couldn't have both.  Why 
> not allow ordering for any tag for example?  Whatever we call each one, 
> if it is album it will require some kind of explanation, because as 
> we've seen there have been at least 3 different uses of Album.

Conceptually, I think the idea of a 'tag' more or less implies unsorted. 
   I tend to think of a tag as a property on each individual photo - 
without the global context that is needed for ordering.   However, I 
agree that the concept of ordering might be useful for any tag...

> > Warren wrote:
> >    If it was available, I'd love to be able to create a sorted album of
> >    photos.   The one time I created a web gallery using f-spot, it really
> >    annoyed me that I couldn't manually order the photos the way I wanted.
> >    When I upload pics to flikr, I have to do them a few at a time to get
> >    them on flikr in the order I want.
>
>
> Is this and ordering you would want to keep around, or just for the 
> upload?  I've never wanted anything but chronological ordering.

Generally, it's something I'd like to keep around.   I'd like to be able 
to keep a portfolio of my better photos for instance, and arrange them 
in the order I like, and then show a slide show of them in that 
particular order when I want to show off my photography...

> Warren: Birthdays isn't an album in my view.  Thats a tag, just like 
> Frank or Boston.  It doesn't describe its essence just something about 
> it.  Why couldn't Birthdays just be a tag?  Would your use case be 
> satisfied if we allowed ordering of all tags? (ordering defaults to 
> chronological as now)

As I said above, I don't think the concept of 'tag' lends itself well to 
ordering...   If we implement ordering for all tags, I'd suggest we 
change the name to 'Album' or something like that.

But yes, if all tags and categories could have an ordering associated 
with them, that would address my concern.   note that the ordering has 
to be associated with the tag/category --- the same photo will need to 
show up in different positions depending on the tag/category being shown.

> Something to lighten the mood:
> Anyone else think its funny that flickr refers to an ordered collection 
> as a 'Set'? :)

I think it's hilarious, myself.  :-)   And an important message.  "It 
doesn't matter what word you use, as long as the semantics are clear to 
the user".

> John: the reason we need to make it one album/whateverwecallit per photo 
> is because that is how it would be stored on disk.  We could maybe 
> workaround this somehow with symmlinks or the like.

Then don't use the term album.   Most people will not easily 
conceptualize that a photo can only belong to one album.   It'll confuse 
people.

> For those of you who like heirarchies:  Isn't the reason everyone is 
> switching to tags to get away from them?  They don't always fit neatly 
> into hierarchies because they would often go in 2 places.  Not to single 
> out Sam, but his heirarchy for Photos looks like this:

I said heirarchy - not tree.   The problem you describe comes from a 
standard filesystem like tree, where each item can only exist in one 
place.  I probably have 400 tags already, and I anticipate adding much 
more - that'd be completely unmanageble without some heirarchy...

Warren