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Re: Category Name Refused

Michael Wayne Goodman wrote:

It seems this "tags vs folders" thing is debated all over the place
(not just f-spot), so I set up a simple Drupal poll to see what people
think.

http://goodmami.org/?q=node/4

I set it up so you can vote without logging in, therefore the results
cannot be taken too seriously, but it might be a good indicator of
where preferences lie (which could guide future development).

If you have a second, please vote once for your preference.  I only
included the options "Folders", "Tags", "Both", and "Other", so if
your choice isn't represented you can write something in the comments
(or to this mailinglist).  Note that for comments, if you don't log
in, the comment will be held for moderation, so it won't show up
immediately.

(Anyway, sorry for posting a link to my personal site, but I needed
somewhere to host the poll.  There is no advertising or anything on
the site.  If this is still a no-no, please let me know)

Hope to get some good responses!

On 7/11/07, Daniel Falk <f-spot mbx zapto org> wrote:

Todd,
I really enjoy discussing this stuff.  You have a different perspective
that I'm trying to be more aware of.
>>  A simple example.  Let's say you went to venice and decided to tag
>> it The
>> Streets and Venice.  Then you wanted to change the tag to be "The
>> Canals".
>> But you can't, because the tag doesn't correspond to a complete idea,
>> but
>> only a set of words.
> Why not? Don't we use words to represent ideas? I could easily change
> the tag from "streets" to "canals". Maybe I just want to find all the
> canal pictures I have, I don't want to have to search for
> canals+venice, canals+eerie, canals+someotherplacethathascanals. Or
> even drill down some hierarchy like Places > Planets > Earth > Land >
> Continents > Europe > Countries > Italy > Cities > Venice > Canals.
While we use words to convey concepts, the concepts themselves are
separate from the word we use.  "The Streets of Rome" can be a single
concept, whereas the words are many.  And it often goes the other way
too, where you have one word corresponding to several different
concepts.  The bottom line: words are not the same thing as concepts.

When organizing photos, I'm interested in the concept more than the
words.  Otherwise I could just type keywords for every picture.  Some
photo organizers work that way.  I don't find that powerful enough.  So
I'd rather have a tag that corresponds to the concept [streets of rome]
if I so choose, that allows me to put whatever words I feel like on the tag. 

Perhaps in the case of Rome and streets, that makes good sense to have a
Streets tag and a Rome tag.  But consider this example.  I have pictures
of my family and my wife's family.  I've taken pictures of my mom and my
wife's.  So I have a "Mom" tag and a "My Family" tag and a "Wife's
family" tag.  My mother-in-law is tagged with "Mom" and "Wife's
family".  Now let's suppose I want to rename the "Mom" tag to "Wife's
mom".  It will rename all the mothers in my entire photo collection to
"Wife's Mom".  Clearly not what I want.  That was my point about the
"Canals" example earlier as well.  It comes when you want to assign new
words to your tag.

I hope that's clearer.  I'm poor at explaining this, as you might have
noticed.
>>  It's not that I don't see the value of a list or cloud, but can't we
>> allow
>> for both concepts in the same interface?
> I'm not a developer, just a user.
I am a developer, so maybe that's why I see things differently, but I'm
also into photography on the side.  So far I have not contributed to
F-Spot as far as development goes, but I am interested in doing so in
the future.
>>  In my humble opinion, it's a deficiency to not allow tag names to
>> have the
>> same name. Unnecessary, and confusing to certain people. Should this >> discussion go to the bug report? Does anybody have the link for that? 
> It sounds like you want nested folders and I want tags. I think Picasa
> allows for both options in its interface, though the last time I
> looked the tags interface was rather clunky. I believe they called
> them keywords, but you can also use I think what they call albums.
Perhaps I want something closer to nested folders.  But those aren't
powerful enough either.  Linux give you the ability to nest folders
without using a photo manager like f-spot, so if that's all I wanted,
the file system would suffice.

If you want a good example of what I like (as far as tags go), there is
a program called Adobe Photoshop Album on windows.

I never liked picasa's system because I found the folders too weak and
the labels too weak.  If they were put together into the same thing like
Photoshop Album does, then it would have the best of both worlds.
> Can you just clarify why you need to use duplicate tags? I still don't
> understand. I mean as an end-user, I'm just interested in your process
> since obviously I'm not doing any coding.
It's not duplicate tags, but rather tags that happen to have the same
name.  I just think they ought to be able to have the same name as long
as the tags have different parent tags.  I mean, if my brother's name is
Gary and I went to school in Gary, Indiana, I wouldn't want them both
showing up all the time if I wanted to search for one or the other.  One
solution is to name the tags "Gary, the brother" and "Gary, the place".
Or you could do Places > Gary and People > Gary.

By the way, I really like your idea about related tags for when you
select "giraffe" and it gives you a list of related tags you have.  I
think your approach to organization makes perfect sense, especially for
you, but I would like something capable of doing something more powerful
as well.  I don't see why the system shouldn't be capable of doing
both.  Therefore, if you don't like Category tags, don't make any, and
it should work fine.

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What does your poll mean by both? It's been my point that tags could have a hierarchical structure without affecting those who want a flat structure (i.e., pleases both points of view). Is that what you mean by both? Or do you mean like how picasa does it?
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