[Digikam-devel] 0.8.0-beta1 release announcement.

[Renchi Raju]

On 8/21/05, Renchi Raju <renchi.raju at gmail.com> wrote:
> I can come up with a tentative announcement later during the day or
> night. 

I'm trying to come up with a list of new features to be included in
the release announcement. Here's a tentative list (feel free to
whittle down and add new items). Gilles, can you add the new features
added in the imageplugins and libraries:

* NEW USER INTERFACE: Albums and Tags have been separated out into
  different views and these views are collapsible.
* DATE BASED VIRTUAL FOLDERS: Each corresponding to the month in 
  which the pictures were taken. Its also possible to filter this 
  view to show photos from single or multiple day(s) and week(s)
* SEARCHING: Two interfaces have been implemented for searching
  on photos:
  - QUICK SEARCH: a keyword based search which also allows 
    date based lookups
  - ADVANCED SEARCH: build rules and groups of rules to do 
    very precise searches.
  - LIVE FEEDBACK: Both searches show instant results based on 
    the current search criteria
* SEARCH BASED VIRTUAL FOLDERS: The searches can be saved as 
  virtual folders and its possible to edit the search criterion
  later.
* TAG FILTERING: A new view has been added to the right side 
  which allows quick drag and drop tag assignments and also
  filtering of photos in the current view. This view is again
  collapsible
* ALBUM LOCATION INDICATOR: When photos are shown from a virtual
  folder (tag, date or search), the photos are grouped together
  based on album locations.
* PHOTO DATES AND COMMENTS: Photos are now scanned for their
  metadata which is then stored in the database. The EXIF 
  timestamp (if available) is used for sorting and searching.
* MEMORY OPTIMIZATION: Thumbnails are now loaded on demand
  and a fixed cache of thumbnails is kept
* NEW THEMES: Dark, Sandy and Orange Crush
* BACKEND CHANGES:
  - Database upgraded to sqlite3
  - New kioslaves for handling date, search, tag, album listing