[KPhotoAlbum] Suggestion: Relations between images

[Paul Fleischer]

2008/2/1, Michael J Gruber <michaeljgruber+gmane at fastmail.fm>:
> Paul Fleischer venit, vidit, dixit 31.01.2008 22:06:
> > Hi again,
> >
> > I have been silent for a while, but I'm still here and still thinking
> > about image groups/hierarchies. Having played around with my own two
> > patches I somewhat got in doubt whether the approaches in them is the
> > most suitable. So, I'll spend some time thinking rather than coding. I
> > have come up with a new shiny concept: RELATIONS. Now, let me start by
>
> I like it, too ;)

Nice to hear.

> Regarding the inheritance, I would suggest that a "derived" image can
> inherit properties (i.e.: Categories) from its source when they are not
> set. For example, categorising raw files makes more sense then
> categorising derived jpg's which may change (along with their md5) when
> you change your mind or your raw conversion tool. On the other hand, one
> usually browses the derived jpg's and wants to have category information
> right there.
>
> The same applies to panos derived from multiple exposures, as well as to
> members in a sequence (such as Jespers dog-tail-chase), where the source
> would be the previous image in a sequence (so that you need to
> categorize only the first one).
>
> I think, in the end it comes down to the structure of an acyclic
> directed graph. "directed" gives you the source/target concept, which
> can implement raw/jpg, pano item/pano, sequence item/sequence successor
> and others. "acyclic" makes inheritance well defined.

Now that is a very interesting idea. I will try to work out some usage
scenario with it.
The main challange here is probably to make it easily understandable
in the user interface what is going on.

> The relation types would serve as different labels for the same
> underlying concept (just like all categories rely on the same concept),
> with possibly different defaults for things like "hide all but left-most
> descendant", "inherit categories downward/upwards", icon etc.

Funny that you mention it, because I started to think about this when
I realised how powerful categories actually are :-)

/Paul