[Shotwell] Use cases of shotwell

[Adam Dingle]

On 08/27/2011 05:36 PM, Ian Molton wrote:
> On Fri, 2011-08-26 at 21:37 +0200, pt wrote:
>> For what I see the events as they are now are just a (fixed)
>> hierarchy, like a folder tree in a file-system. For me they are a
>> time-line with a confusing name: I never change an event name to
>> something like 'trip to Paris', because we have tags for this. Plus,
>> there are obvious problems with reoccurring events, like birthdays,
>> that are simply not manageable with the current system.
> Agreed 100%.
>
> My mum (my useability yardstick) doesnt get the 'Events' at all - and I
> have to say, I didnt get them until I relalised you could change the
> date to anything else.

Events are intended to be a time-based grouping of photos that you can 
adjust a little bit.  Sometimes it's convenient to use a name rather 
than a date for a particular group of photos or to merge two adjacent 
dates into a single group; Shotwell lets you do that.  If you don't want 
to apply any adjustments, events simply give you a time-based tree.

With that said, there are occasionally some surprises for users.  
Earlier in this thread, a user dragged a photo with date 1945 into an 
event and saw the event date change and was surprised.  Really, the user 
should have used Shotwell's Adjust Date and Time dialog to fix the date 
on the photo.  When you do that the photo should really jump into the 
correct event, but we haven't implemented that yet (see 
http://redmine.yorba.org/issues/1940).  So today, you need to use Adjust 
Date and Time to fix the date, then drag to the appropriate event.  I 
agree this is quite awkward.

>
> I dont see the point in them, dont want them, and would like an option
> to turn them off since they prevent me seeing my tags until I roll them
> up.

I agree that you shouldn't have to see the event tree if you don't want 
to.  See http://redmine.yorba.org/issues/4043 .

>
> My mum is begging me for a timeline for shotwell since she used this on
> F-Spot before.

Yes - you're not the first to want this:

http://redmine.yorba.org/issues/2195

>
> I'd quite like a timeline, but hierarchical tags is all I needed. With
> hierarchical tags, 'Events' becomes essentially useless. Perhaps the
> events logic could be recycled to implement a "Create tags automatically
> for events" option on import?

We've always intended that events are for grouping by time, whereas tags 
are for grouping based on what's in a photo (e.g. a particular person).  
(If you like, you can even think of events today as a special set of 
time-sorted hierarchical tags automatically created based on photos' 
dates.)  It sounds like you'd like to use ordinary tags for time-based 
grouping.  There are disadvantages to that: for example, tags sort in 
alphabetical order, so if you give them names like 'Beach Trip' and 
'Forest Vacation' then they may appear in an order completely unrelated 
to when the photos were taken.

adam