Re: New Wallpaper Properties Dialog

[Christian Rose <menthos gnome org>]

mån 2003-10-27 klockan 14.24 skrev Rodney Dawes:
> > > The main feature is the storage of meta-data and the list of available
> > > wallpapers, in an XML file in ~/.gnome2/. For each individual image, the
> > > filename, a descriptive name, image scaling type, background color type,
> > > and background colors are all stored. There is no DTD yet, but one will be
> > > written for the next release.
> > 
> > What is the metadata for? Why not simply show image thumbnails in known
> > system directories, as well as a list of user-chosen images?
[...]
> > When choosing an image for wallpaper, it is unlikely that the user will care
> > to give the image a special name, figure out its file size (particularly in
> > K, I would understand having the size in dimensions, but even that seems
> > like overkill), know what kind of image format it is, or even care what the
> > file name is. Surely the primary use case is "go in, find something pretty
> > and make it so", nothing more...?
> 
> The code/behavior of the capplet is not to expect the user to care to go
> in and hand-edit the XML to set the pretty name, file size, format, or
> width and height. The entire point is to "make it pretty" for users, and
> to encourage the artists/developers to use more meta-data in their
> wallpapers and the thumbnails that get created. The thumbnail spec
> states several pieces of meta-data in the document, that are entirely
> unused in GNOME and I imagine more places as well.

I fully agree with the need for displaying image metadata somewhere, and
that the wallpaper properties dialog would probably be the most natural
place for that.

As an actual example, a (not very computer literate) person I know likes
hiking and skiing in the mountains a lot, so I set him up with a default
"mountain.jpg" wallpaper showing a snowy mountain that I found somewhere
on the harddrive. He likes the picture a lot, but now every time he sits
in front of the wallpaper and I'm in the room he asks me if I've found
out *what* mountain it is. Because it annoys him a lot that he doesn't
know, and as a consequence it annoys me that I cannot give him an answer
to finally put the matter to rest. :-)

Having a proper wallpaper title and description would be most useful in
many cases, and probably answering some potential questions about the
pictured object when available. Also, I can imagine that some
artists/photographers would, even though they agree to the free use of
their pictures, also want to have their name credited for their work
where possible. Even if they don't request it it's probably a nice
gesture.

Also, this would be analogous to our theme properties, since we provide
titles and descriptions for those.

I don't know if these fields are all supported in the spec, but below
are some fictious examples of wallpaper metadata potentially useful to
the user:

Filename        Title          Description			Artist
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
matterhorn.jpg  Matterhorn     The Matterhorn peak (4478m),     Mike Wallin
                               at the border of Italy and
                               Switzerland. The picture is
                               showing the west face.
lafenice.jpg    La Fenice      The La Fenice theatre in         Ferry Ahrlé
                               Venice. Painting painted in
                               1968.

The benefit of having proper metadata in addition to just filenames is
also that metadata, in contrast to filenames, can be properly localized.
Also, if we ship the gnome-backgrounds/gnome-wallpapers package as part
of the desktop, we can set an example for other wallpaper creators by
having proper and localized metadata for all those wallpapers.


Christian