Re: multilingual tags

["Dotan Cohen" <dotancohen gmail com>]

On 16/09/06, Thomas PARIS <mercen mercen org> wrote:
> On Fri Sep 15 at 20:31 (+0300), Dotan Cohen wrote:
> > I agree 100% about following open and popular specs for the things
> > that the specs specify. However, if we limit F-spot's funcionality by
> > the limits of the specs, then F-spot could never be better than any
> > other app that conforms to those same specs and also breaks them.
>
> I beg to disagree. It's not because we follow the same specs that we
> necessarily provide the same functionnality.

Correct, but we limit ourselves if we want to do something that the
writers of the specs did not think of. For instance, the multilingual
tags. Currently, XMP does not allow this for the feild that we want.
My solution would give F-spot the ability to do what we want, yet
still conform to spec.

> > That's why my solution conforms to the specs and lets other apps read
> > the tags (that are in XMP), and still provides to F-spot added
> > functionality through the FSF data.
>
> That might make it acceptable, but I'm not going to back this one up.
> Making sure other apps don't complain when reading the files is just not
> good enough for me.

Than what would be good enough? Having the other apps understand the
relationship between the tags of different languages? That will not
happen without rewritting the other apps anyway- not a goal of F-spot.
However, if the developers of the other apps wish, then they too can
read and use the FSF data. If not, then they will see the tags of all
languages all the time- not a bad thing.

I think that multi-lingual tags is a great idea that I know will be
useful for many people- anyone who has a dual-language household
(almost everyone I know), a dual language website, or who needs to
share photos with peope who do not speak his native language.

User case:
Yosi speaks Hebrew at home. His mother speaks Arabic. He travels to
Spain for a wedding. Yosi naturally tags his photos in Hebrew. This
way, his wife and children can read them. However, although his mother
speaks Hebrew, she does not read it well. So the kids who know Arabic
spend an afternoon tagging the photos for grandma. Yosi decides to
send some photos of the wedding to the bride and groom. He chooses the
photos to send and tags them in Spanish.
The bride and groom may or may not use F-spot. If they do, then they
will see only the Spanish tags. If they don't then they will see the
Spanish tags, which they understand, and the Hebrew and Arabic tags,
which mean nothing to them but do not interfere with their program's
ability to display the Spanish tags.

I think that many households would have a use like this. In my family
alone, we have native Hebrew, Romanian, English, and Polish speakers.
For everybody to read them, we'd need at least both Hebrew and English
tags. I'm open to any solution that would allow this while conforming
to the specs. I feel that my solution does in fact allow this, and
conform to specs. However, if you've anything else to propose, please
do. I'm certain that there are other solutions that I did not think
of.

Dotan Cohen