image viewers: a different approach

[Luciano Montanaro]

El Jueves, 27 de Octubre de 2005 17:59, Aurelien Gateau escribió:
> Benjamin Meyer wrote:
> >> 2. Enhanced viewer. For image folders (photos). Basic manipulation.
> >> Features: previews, step through images, rotate (and save), exif
> >> manipulation.
> >> Most of the current viewers fit more or less in this category.
> >>
> >> 3. Image organization. Not so much a viewer but closely related from
> >> the users perspective. From a simple folder layout to a database,
> >> depending on what the user wants.
> >> Kimdaba belongs in this category. Afaik digikam has such features as
> >> well.
> >
> > I don't really see a difference between #2 and #3.  #2 really seems to
> > be a relic of 1998 where everyone was writing there own
> > photoViewer2000++ and cramming as many things into it as possible, but
> > being crap compared to photoshop.  Enhanced viewers are both crappy
> > editor and crappy organizers because of how they define themselves. 
> > Much more usefull as shown by countless companies producing
> > applications such as iPhoto are image organization applications with
> > basic manipulation.
> >
> > Really there should be three, not four
> >
> > 1) Image viewer component that any application can use
> > 2) Image Organizer with basic editing tools
> > 3) Image Editor
>
> I agree with you, and that's why I always resisted to implement funky
> image effects in Gwenview (only manipulations available for now are
> rotation and mirroring)
>
> I was thinking about how Gwenview could be integrated to KDE 4.0 a few
> days ago and I came to a possible solution: forget Gwenview as a
> standalone application, focus on KParts and Konqueror instead:
> - Replace the khtmlimage part with Gwenview image part
> - Replace the photo album part with Gwenview dir part
> - Merge thumbnail view improvements from Gwenview into Konqueror
> thumbnail view.

This is exactly what I would like to see. And this stuff does not have to be 
used from konqueror only. It can all be used by more specialized 
applications.

>
> It sadden me a bit to give up the standalone application, but maybe this
> would be the best solution...

I understand that the application itself loses visibility. But in this way 
we go in the general direction of letting the user think about the task, 
and not the application. Even because it's quite difficult for most new 
users to know what application has to be used for a given task.

I always think of Konqueror as a graphical shell. There are still usability 
issues to be solved, for sure, but they may be addressed. 

>
> Aurélien

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Luciano Montanaro //
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