[Digikam-devel] [Bug 127753] New: Persistent selection / image tray

[Martin Rehn]

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http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=127753         
           Summary: Persistent selection / image tray
           Product: digikam
           Version: unspecified
          Platform: unspecified
        OS/Version: Linux
            Status: UNCONFIRMED
          Severity: wishlist
          Priority: NOR
         Component: general
        AssignedTo: digikam-devel kde org
        ReportedBy: martinrehn hotpop com


Version:           0.8.2-rc1 (using KDE 3.5.2, Debian Package 4:3.5.2-2+b1 (testing/unstable))
Compiler:          Target: i486-linux-gnu
OS:                Linux (i686) release 2.6.16-1-686

This suggestion addresses use cases where you want to select pictures from across your collection in order to do something with them later, such as burning them to a CD. This suggestion applies to the case when the user would like to select quite a few images and also be able to view the selected images together, adding and removing images.

One way for the user to go about this task currently is to add a temporary tag "Selected" to the images in question. They will then be browsable in the "Selected" tag view. The user can de-select images by removing the tag. Also, the user can see whether a particular image is selected while browsing the collection from the presence of the tag. When the user has finished working with the images, the tag can be removed.

I suggest that some UI sugar is added to help users do the above more easily. Borrowing from Picasa, the "persistently selected" images could be referred to as the "image tray". There would be a UI button to add/remove selected images to/from the tray. Images currently in the tray could be marked with a circular icon. The tray would have its own top-level tab in the UI, also marked with the circular icon. There would be an UI option to empty the tray. 

Once the tray has been properly populated, the user would have to go to the tray, select all images and apply the appropriate action. (Alternatively, there could be a set of actions that apply to images in the tray, but I believe that could confuse users. Better to let all actions apply to the "ordinary" selection.)