automatically copying the photos over

[Patrick Wagstrom <patrick wagstrom net>]

I'm just wondering, what's the logic behind having F-spot always copy 
the photos over when importing photos?  It seems like there are a few 
problems with this functionality, or at the very least, it's current 
implementation that cause issues in my use and a few other folks in my LUG.

First, with it on by default, it frequently makes imports take a lot 
longer, especially if the photos are already on a safe and stable place 
on your disk.

Secondly, if you're like me, and don't pay attention when it's on, you 
have to click cancel, in which case it leaves all the previously copied 
files already sitting in your other location, which you need to go clean 
up manually and try the import again.

Thirdly, I've had problems with being stupid like this and having f-spot 
import duplicates, which are rather hard to find most of the time.

So the way I see it there are a few possible solutions to this issue:

1. Mandate copying of photos over
2. Retrain all users to like copying their photos over
3. Make the default not to copy photos over
4. Have F-spot remember whether or not you told it to copy photos over

Option 1 isn't that good because lot of people manage their photos with 
a different directory structure.  Option 2 isn't possible because there 
will always be dumb users like myself.  Option 3 is a possibility, but 
I'd imagine that some users like the feature.  Option 4 is a 
possibility, but raises some other issues regarding consistency -- for 
example, do we set it per filesystem, device, path?

In my view, it makes the most sense to implement option 4 by having 
F-Spot just store a g-conf key and set the value on the import dialog 
when the dialog is created.

Before I go and implement this, is there any reason why implementing 
option 4 somehow goes against the GNOME and F-Spot UI guidelines.  We're 
not talking about a new UI element, just remembering the state of the 
form when reloaded.

Any thoughts?

--Patrick