i have been having a look at the adobe photoshop album to see how they
handle the concept of nested albums and i have picked up some ideas from
there. here is an alternate proposal for handling albums when user has a
nested photo directories:
* there may or may not be a root album library path. the user may add
directories as albums from anywhere on the hard-disk. i'm not really
sure about this one. more on this later.
* the albums/directories are _not_ shown as in the nested directory layout
but as a flat list of albums (this is how adobe photoshop album handles
it). in addition albums can be sorted by collections or dates. this is
very similar to what we have currently.
* only the albums which have been added to the album list will be
monitored. new directories not added/renamed/moved _using_ digikam will
have to be manually added to the album list. an easy path of upgrade for
current digikam users can be provided, where all their current albums
will be automatically added to the album list. also a function can be
provided for scanning the album library path (if we retain this) to add
new albums.
* a single sqlite based database will be used for storing the album
caption, collection and dates and also the image caption, tags, date,
width and height. additionally if a user opens and closes an album, a
digikam.xml file will be written out to the album. this provides the
advantage that if an user renames or moves the album from outside digikam,
all the album/image properites can still be extracted back into the sqlite
database. also its important to have ascii files for ensuring long term
portability. again as before an easy upgrade path will be provided for
current users.
* in addition to the physical directory based album library, the album
view on the left will also show tag based albums (virtual albums).
clicking on a tag for eg: Travel/Baltimore will show all images which have
been tagged with this tag. this is why a central sqlite database is
needed. later we can extend these to have more virtual albums which are
based on some conditions like : images with comments wedding and of Person
John.
i'm just brainstorming here. nothing is set in stone. your
comments/suggestions/flames are welcome as always.
renchi
PS: during the time i was busy with my work, i know some of you offered
some bounty for implementing the nested-albums-proposal which i had
earlier put up on the web. i would like to thank them for the offer; but i
and other digikam developers code for the fun of it; and i don't
expect any financial rewards for the same.
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