Refreshing thumbnails/catalog

[Yang Zhang <yanghatespam gmail com>]

Is there a way to refresh the thumbnails/catalog, after removing some of 
the photos from disk outside of F-Spot?  This has been brought up over a 
year ago, but with no answer:

http://www.mail-archive.com/f-spot-list gnome org/msg02734.html

Also, here was a somewhat unsatisfying answer; removing from catalog and 
re-importing photos will lose all the metadata associated with the 
photos (e.g. descriptions and tags):

http://www.mail-archive.com/f-spot-list gnome org/msg03600.html

More requests for this feature:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=821352
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=460648

Thanks in advance.
--
Yang Zhang
http://www.mit.edu/~y_z/