[Shotwell] Features for Shotwell 0.6

[Adam Dingle]

Ingo Lütkebohle wrote:
>  * a D-BUS API (or a REST one)
>   

By a D-Bus API, do you mean an API that allows other processes to 
control the running Shotwell instance via D-Bus, sending it commands 
which are similar to Shotwell's menu commands (e.g. import, rotate, 
publish and so on)?  And by a REST API, do you mean a similar mechanism 
in which Shotwell will listen for HTTP connections at some port and 
respond to similar commands sent in REST style?

We haven't thought much about such mechanisms.  When Shotwell does have 
an API, we've been thinking that it will work more like gedit: people 
will be able to write plugins, which will be shared libraries which 
Shotwell will load on startup.  With this system, plugins will be able 
to add menu commands to Shotwell and will be able to manipulate the 
Shotwell library by calling API functions, but this will all happen 
in-process.  (This is http://trac.yorba.org/ticket/1603 ).

Do you see compelling use cases for an external D-Bus API rather than an 
internal plugin-based one?  If so, can you explain them a bit?

>  * json/xml import/export for photo meta-data
>   

For tags, captions and descriptions we've been thinking that we'd 
implement import/export via IPTC/XMP metadata.  When Shotwell imports 
photos, it can read this metadata automatically 
(http://trac.yorba.org/ticket/1596).  As for exporting 
(http://trac.yorba.org/ticket/1290), perhaps Shotwell can keep IPTC/XMP 
tags up to date in photo files automatically (like Picasa), or perhaps 
it can write these tags back to photo files only when the user 
explicitly requests it.  I hope we'll be able to update the tags 
automatically at some point.

Are you proposing JSON/XML import/export because (a) you want to 
import/export metadata which can't be conveniently stored in IPTC/XMP 
(e.g. Shotwell's event information), or (b) you think that JSON/XML 
import/export might be more a useful mechanism than IPTC/XMP?  We might 
lean toward IPTC/XMP because it keeps the metadata with the photo files 
and is likely to work with other photo managers automatically.  But if 
you have use cases for (a) and/or (b) then we'd be interested to hear them.

cheers
adam