[Shotwell] Shotwell 0.7 plan

[Adam Dingle]

Friends of Shotwell,

now that 0.6 is out the door we've already begun development for 
Shotwell 0.7.  We plan to release 0.7 some time in August, in time to 
make it comfortably into the fall releases of major distributions 
(Fedora, Ubuntu).  This means that 0.7 will be a shorter release cycle 
than 0.5 and 0.6 were, and so we must correspondingly be a bit less 
ambitious.  But we would like to include the following major new 
features in 0.7:

     * Monitoring the library directory (i.e. the import directory the 
user chooses in the Preferences dialog) for added and removed files, 
which will be automatically added to or removed from the Shotwell 
library. The user will have a preference to enable or disable 
monitoring. Shotwell 0.7 will monitor only this single directory. In 
future releases we hope to be able to monitor multiple directories.  
[http://trac.yorba.org/ticket/374]

     * Rating photos. The user will be able to assign any of the 
following ratings to each photo: unrated (the default), 1-5 stars, or 
Rejected (the lowest rating). You will be able to sort and/or filter by 
rating. By default, Shotwell will display all photos except rejected 
photos. In the browser view, we'll have a dropdown menu on the toolbar 
that will allow you to select a different filter, e.g. only 3 stars and 
higher. This will replace Shotwell's existing hidden/favorites 
mechanism. When you upgrade from 0.6 to 0.7, all previously hidden 
photos will become Rejected and all previously favorite photos will be 
assigned a rating of 5 stars.  [http://trac.yorba.org/ticket/2233]

     * Support for video files. The user will be able to import videos 
from cameras and from folders. Shotwell will display a thumbnail for 
each video. Videos will appear along with photos in events, and tagging 
and ratings will work for videos as they do for photos. In 0.7, double 
clicking a video will probably launch Totem rather than playing the 
video inside Shotwell (though we'd like to support that sooner or 
later).  [http://trac.yorba.org/ticket/855]

     * Migration for F-Spot users. Shotwell 0.7 will be able to migrate 
an F-Spot library to Shotwell by reading the F-Spot database directly. 
Tags and ratings from F-Spot will be preserved. If a user has edited a 
photo in F-Spot, the latest version of the photo (and, perhaps, the 
original version too) will be available in Shotwell.  
[http://trac.yorba.org/ticket/139]

     * A last import page that displays all photos from the last import. 
This will make it much easier to find all the photos you've just 
imported.  [http://trac.yorba.org/ticket/897]

If time permits, we may additionally include one or more of the 
following major features:

     * user-configurable import directory hierarchy  
[http://trac.yorba.org/ticket/1597]
     * hierarchical tags  [http://trac.yorba.org/ticket/1401]
     * store tags in photo files [http://trac.yorba.org/ticket/1290]
     * Highlights detail adjustment  [http://trac.yorba.org/ticket/752]
     * upload to Shutterfly  [http://trac.yorba.org/ticket/1094]

Of course, we also hope to implement numerous smaller improvements. All 
Shotwell tickets currently marked high are potential candidates for 0.7, 
though we will almost certainly not be able to implement all of these.

Your feedback on this plan is welcome.  I've also added all of the above 
to a new 0.7 section on the Shotwell wiki page 
(http://trac.yorba.org/wiki/Shotwell).

adam