Re: Removing 'Backgrounds and Emblems'

[Allan Day <allanpday gmail com>]

On Mon, 2010-08-02 at 06:06 -0700, Charlie De wrote: 
> Thanks to Allan for the responses, but this comment I don't understand:
> 
>  
> > This is a highly  non-standard usage! :) Photo ratings isn't
> > functionality that Nautilus should  be providing, IMO.
> > 
> > It sounds like you're using Nautilus like a photo  management tool. There
> > are a couple of good apps for that on  GNOME.
> 
> 
> Surely the emblem feature is 'agnostic', you're not specifying for what reasons 
> it may or may not be used.  Some may use it to rate photos, others to organize 
> spreadsheets... all usage of the feature is valid, no?

Sure - you're right. I was (badly) suggesting that photo management
tools provide the kind of metadata-based file organisation which you
seem to have been emulating with emblems, but maybe I was wrong.

> Yes, you could say I use Nautilus like a photo management tool.  The reason is 
> that it is the best such tool available, far far better than any app dedicated 
> to the purpose.  I think I've tried just about all of them and they all suffer 
> from the problem that they are not Nautilus.  They offer a small subset of 
> features I have in Nautilus and a few unnecessary bells and whistles on top.

Fair enough. :) I'm sure there are plenty of people who prefer to use a file manager to organise their photos.

> The comment you've made may have been valid if I had been demanding features 
> specific to photo management, but I hadn't.  The features I find indispensable 
> in photo management, such as previews, emblems, sorting, launching of scripts, 
> these are all generic features that apply to many types of files and types of 
> usage.

I agree to a certain extent. Though those features are common to all
files, the kinds of organising and browsing functionality you want are
often different according to the type of file - you want to browse your
music by artist or your photos by date taken, for example. A photo
manager allows you to filter and organise by tag (the equivalent of
emblems). That's a big advantage for many people and its something you
can't do with a file manager.

The trend right now is towards customised interfaces for particular
kinds of files. That makes a lot of sense to me.

Allan
--
IRC: aday on irc.gnome.org