Re: Please, continue evonving f-spot

[Simon Lindgren <simon n lindgren gmail com>]

Oops, originally sent this directly to Mauricio...

fre 2011-08-12 klockan 10:51 -0500 skrev Mauricio Tellez:
> Hi, competition is always good and I think f-spot's developers must pay
> attention to peaple say about shotwell's strenghts and f-spot weakness, so
> here I go:
> 

Sounds like an unfair f-spot vs shotwell to me :)
That said, f-spot is undermaintained atm.


> Shotwell strenghts:
> 1. Speed: The thumbnails displays are lighting fast. I can jump to any part
> of my photo collection and thumbs get displayed almost instantly
> 2. Multiple photo collection: From the command line I can specify which
> collection I want to start.

f-spot can do this as well, use
$ f-spot --basedir $DB_DIR --photodir $PHOTO_DIR

> 3. Export. The facebook plugin works great, I haven't mess with the others
> but this one works as expected (a must for me)
> 4. Stability. So far, I have not stability issues.
> 5. Change date
> 
> F-spot weakness:
> 1. Low Speed: The thumbnails are slow, if I jump to some point oh my
> collection, the thumbnails seem to be regenerated. Or if I use the window's
> scroll bar to navigate through thumbnails, I have to stop navigation at some
> point to be able to see the thumbs at that position (again, the thumbs looks
> empty and after 2 o 3 seconds they appear)

f-spot uses the system thumbnails cache from which the images get
evicted after a while (this time can be changed).

Shotwell uses its own thumbnail directory which is in general considered
to be a Very Bad Thing®, but has an advantage in this case. IMO it is
still the wrong way to go, the correct way is to fix the system-wide one
instead.

> 2. No Multiple photo collection. I can at least 2 uses of this:
>    a) The Hidden tag hasn't subtags, so if I had a lot of pics there this I
> had trouble finding something. And, what is the point of a tag named Hidden
> if It is visible at the tag structure? I have in there some pics of ex
> girlfriends, then I show my actual girlfriend some pics of us, but when she
> show the "hidden" tag, she demand to see inside! so hidden do not actually
> hide lol

Tags are tags, not directories, so you can have many of them on each
photo.
Organize the photos by your normal tags and then tag the ones you don't
want to be shown normally with the Hidden tag. If you fear your
girlfriend is going to find the pics then you better remove them from
your harddrive altogether ;)

>    b) I want to share f-spot with another person and can't create another
> account for him

I believe this is a problem with shotwell too, is it not?

> 3. Export plugins. I use a lot smugmug and facebook to share my photos, but
> suddenly they both stop working (well there is now the smugmug redux), but
> today the facebook plugin isn't working.

This is a weak point, and a symptom of the undermaintained-ness of
f-spot (since I'm sure they worked at one point).

> 4. Stability. I had several issues here. 1 of 3 times, when I import some
> pics, f-spot hangs, then I retry the import and everything goes fine. Same
> for export to a
> folder. Also, sometimes the thumbs do not show, so I have to double click a
>  empty thumbnail to see at what photo I'm positioned.

It's possible that there was an error when generating the thumb, or it
might be a bug... I have noticed that there seems to be a race or some
other bug in the thumbnail loading which makes f-spot stop updating the
ui.

> 5. The date change isn't working for me. I went vacation with my family and
> my sister's camara has the wrong date (something at 1950), when I imported
> this photos, f-spot sorted like the year was 2050, then I try to change the
> date, but with not luck
> 
> I'm using f-spot for a couple of years and was very happy with it, but I
> must admit that the weakness I already mention are pissing me off from a
> months ago, so I hope this weakness change to strengths soon!
> 

Unless I'm mistaken, you've better not change to shotwell, it seems to
be (almost) as bad! ;)

-- 
Simon Lindgren