[Shotwell] Improvement suggestions

[Mattias Põldaru]

This is resent message from the subscribed address. My apologies if you 
end up receiving two messages.

Hello

I today found out about your fine piece of software, Shotwell. It is
really nice, small and *fast*. It even feels flying at light-speed, at
least when compared to F-Spot (which is still nice too, but at least
with >25k pictures becomes a little slow, I haven't tested Shotwell in
such case).

There are some improvement ideas I would like to share with you. Most
likely there is not much new, in this case take this as a thumbs up :)

1. Quite a number of keyboards and mouses have back and forward buttons,
which are mostly useful for browsing web. These keys could be used in
Shotwell too, for navigating in 10 or 20 item history.

2. Optional integration with F-Spot, so you could tick "Common database
with F-Spot" in preferences. F-Spot uses simply a sqlite db. On start-up
the Shotwell should then check if F-Spot is running and give user a
notice about read only mode.

3. When I drag a picture to the window, it says "1 photo successfully
imported" while showing the photo and goes to "Photos" directory. I
would prefer to see the previously imported image selected either in
directory or even shown in full window.

4. Instead of blue border, you could prefer light gray, to indicate
which images are selected, it would look more professional and would not
impact eye perception of colours. I really like the medium dark gray
background.

5. Press delete key to trash currently open image file, with optional
confirmation.

6. Changing rotate icon when trying to hit Ctrl+R is confusing. So 
Ctrl+R should rotate the image CCW (while CCW icon is shown), Ctrl+Shift
should change the icon back to normal and Ctrl+Shift+R rotate CW.

7. Using page up and page down to navigate, with Ctrl to navigate
through events. (This automatically makes the Presentation control
remotes useful, which are are simply HID keyboards with PgUp and PgDn keys
for Prev - Next slide, . (a dot) for blank screen, Esc to end session,
F5 to start presentation, these are simply Powerpoint default shortcuts)

8. Backspace for full-window image should move to containing event
directory (same as doubleclick).

9. Slideshow and fullscreen view should be directly switchable from one
mode to another.

10. For cropping, current Gimp interface is worth a medallion for easy
mouse usage, it is a little hard to snap from current 12px area (at
least on 1640x1050 which is becoming more common).

11. This is probably a feature for 2.5, but IMHO Gnome desktop is still
lacking a decent way to present images with nice transitions. It should
be enabled only with OpenGL and default to nice 800ms fade with nice Ken
Burns effect (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Burns_Effect). Most of
other effects are not worth implementing.

I hope at least some of this makes some sense.


I found from your website, that you get paid for your work on open
source and wondered what business model enables such a incredible thing.


Thank you all for your hard work on good software.

With best regards
Mattias Põldaru