[Shotwell] element spacing, tags and events

[Peter DO Smith]

On Mon, Jul 12, 2010 at 5:36 PM, Adam Dingle <adam at yorba.org> wrote:
> Peter,
>
> On 07/12/2010 12:50 AM, Peter DO Smith wrote:
>> Yes, agreed. Auto-complete is a good solution, especially when dealing
>> with large lists. In my own work I use them extensively, for example
>> when selecting a product from a product list of many thousands. The
>> advantage really comes to the fore if one has multi-word tags where
>> the auto-complete searches on all words in the tag.  But I would hate
>> to lose the drag and drop tagging, I find it very satisfying.
>>
>
> We could think about reducing the spacing in the tags list, but I'm
> somewhat worried about harming readability.

Yes, readability might suffer. I like the present open layout but
still a small reduction in spacing would help.

>  I think we should
> prioritize implementing tag autocomplete and hierarchical tags.  Once we
> have those features, I'm hopeful you'll be able to work with a large tag
> list easily, especially if we add good keyboard shortcuts.

Agreed, auto-complete will be a huge help.

>  Those
> features are unlikely for 0.7 (appearing next month!) but should be a
> high priority for further releases later this year.
>
>> One of the additional features I would like is the capability to type
>> in a description for the photo. What I would like to do here is select
>> the photo and simply start typing. Any normal keystrokes after a photo
>> has been selected will indicate that I am entering a description. Then
>> any non-trivial word can be used to automatically tag the photo
>>
>
> As I'm sure you know, you can already edit each photo's title simply by
> pressing F2.

Renaming the photo is not quite the same thing. There is also a
semantic problem here. I don't think we should confuse the terms 'file
name' with  'photo title'. Ideally we need two extra columns in
PhotoTable, photo_title and photo_description.

> Before long, we plan to implement an integrated search box
> that will search photos by any field including title (this is
> http://trac.yorba.org/ticket/80).  We're also considering letting the
> user enter a multi-line description for each photo

Yes, this is what I want. A lot depends on the presentation, where and
how you display the description.

> (http://trac.yorba.org/ticket/1573).  If we do so, we should also have a
> keyboard shortcut that will let you edit that description easily.
>
> Thanks as always for your ideas and feedback!
>
Thanks Adam, I am so impressed by Shotwell and the direction it is
taking. You have even inspired me to play with Vala. After having
developed systems in most mainstream languages I rather like what I
see with Vala.
Peter