Re: Improving UI for use on a MythTV system or on wife/granny/child's lap.

["jason switzer" <jswitzer gmail com>]

On 3/28/07, Richard Bronosky <mythtv bronosky com> wrote:

I've asked a lot of questions about Mono and Glade, but I've never
opened up the discussion to what my ultimate goal is.

In a sentence:
I want the F-Spot UI to allow comfortable management of photos using a
full screen interface and no mouse.

I realize that everything that much of what f-spot is used for will
require point and click.  I do however think that keystrokes can be
used by someone who uses a camera to shoot pictures of their family,
then loads all the photos onto a computer and selectively sends a
portion to an online sharing site.  I'm not even suggesting that this
be done with a remote.  I do however think that a wireless keyboard
should suffice.

I will get the ball rolling by bulleting a few points:
1. In full screen mode, only the Esc key should exit.
   * I was very disappointed to find that I could not Ctrl-T to tag an
image when browsing in full screen.
2. Full screen mode needs a comprehensive set of keyboard shortcuts.
3. Full screen mode should have a keystroke to invoke a hierarchical
(translucent) menu that can be navigated with just the arrow keys.
(Similar to hitting "m" during playback on MythTV.)
4. Currently Ctrl-T applies the currently highlighted selection of
tags.  There need to be a keystroke to remove them as well.  (I often
find that when browsing the latest crop of baby photos in edit mode my
wife (Ctrl-T) tags one, only to find that the very next photo is the
same but with a better smile.  She must then, hand the keyboard (or
usually laptop) over to me so I can remove the tags.)
5.  We need a way to apply more than just one selection of tags via keyboard.
6.  We must consider how painful it is to perform the initial
organization of an existing library.  I think this is often overlooked
because everyone who develops f-spot is already entrenched in using
it.

I wanted to get the community started on that discussion while I get
my stuff going.

What do you think?

I think this would be great! A photo manager that has usable keyboard shortcuts for most/all functions would make things on a desktop (not to mention a myth box) extremely fast!

I would love to not have to use the mouse to tag, edit, and do most things in F-Spot.

If you need someone to help test this feature, I would be more than willing (use to the vi style shortcuts, but can deal with windows style, just not emacs).

-Jason