Basic Idea and implementation details of Tagging - Need Suggestions from all.

[Boudewijn Rempt]

On Friday 03 June 2011 Jun, srikanth tiyyagura wrote:
> *Hi krita developers,*
> 
>  This is the idea of tagging implementation in krita. Look at it once and
> correct me if I'm wrong .
> 
>  *What is Tagging ?*
> 
>  Tagging means adding some tags to the resources in krita and call them
> according to your use. In Tagging, there are three main functions
> 
>  1). Adding a Tag – here, we will create a tag and add it to the resource.
> 
>  2). Deleting a Tag – we can delete a tag for resource.
> 
>  3). Search for resource – By using tags, we can search for resources which
> contains particular resource.
> 

UI-wise this looks a bit weird. I think we need to have a separate box for adding/deleting and for searching. Now for adding/deleting tags, it's useful to play with gwenview and digikam: both have implementations for tagging, and both suck. Ideally, we'd have a combination of dropdown to select tags and free-format input field. Also note that tags are hierarchical, i.e:

/work/games/concept/grungy
/work/games
/work/comics/mutants/hero
/work/comics/mutants/badguy
/fun/
/experiment/comics

these are six tags.

Ideally, we'd have some kind of autocompletion while typing which we also have in the file dialog. When you type work/ it will offer in a dropdown games and comics; when you type or select comics, you get mutants/here and mutants badguy.

For deleting a tag, you don't need a button or a radio box; just allow people to delete the tag like you delete a line in a text editor.

In ascii art, I imagine the gui to look a bit like this:

+-----------------+
| search entry    + search button
+-----------------+

And for the tag list with an item:

+-----------------+
| work/bla/bla   ^+-----------------------------+
| woI            #|work/                       ^|
|                #|work/comics                 #|
|                v|work/comics/mutants/hero    #|
+-----------------+work/comics/mutuants/baddy  #|
                  |fun/                        V|
                  +-----------------------------+

(I = cursor, so the user is typing here -- next to that the popup with the already existing tags)

>  *How we are implementing ?*
> 
>  *1. UI Description*
> 
>  In the UI, we thought of placing a text field and three radio buttons for
> adding, deleting and searching. How UI works for three functions is
> described below
> 
>  *For Add functionality, *
> 
> 
>  Whenever we click on the resource, the tags associated with them, will
> display in the text field separated with comma ' , ' like this " round,
> dark, green, "
> 
>  If we want to add a tag
> 
>  1) we click on the add radio button.
> 
>  2). Next, we select the resource for which we want to add the tag.
> 
>  3). Whenever we select the resource, the tags associate with the resource
> will be displayed. At the end of the list, the cursor will appear
> 
>  4) Now we can enter the tag name and press enter to add.
> 
> 
>  *For Delete functionality,*
> 
> 
>  If we want to delete a tag
> 
>  1) we click on the delete radio button.
> 
>  2). Next, we select the resource for which we want to delete the tag.
> 
>  3). Whenever we select the resource, the tags associate with the resource
> will be displayed.
> 
>  4) we can delete the tag which we don't want and press enter.
> 
> 
>  *For Search functionality,*
> 
> 
>  1). we need to click on the search radio button
> 
>  2). we enter the tag in the text field and press enter
> 
>  3). we will provide the autocompletion option
> 
> 
>  *2. Code Description*
> 
>  For implementing tagging, the first thing we need to do is to store the
> tags with resources. For this, we are using QmultiHash object in
> koResourceServer.h file.
> 
>  QMultiHash <Qstring,key > - Qstring is ResourceFilename and key is tag
> 
> QmultiHash would make the lookup for a tag much faster ..
> 
> 
>  *Now Functions :*
> 
> 
>  void addTagObject (koResource, string);
> 
> void deleteTagObject (koResource, string);
> 
> koResourceList filterTagObjects (string);
> 
> 
>  *whenever a tag is created for an object, we call the function
> addTagObject(koResource, string)*
> 
> 
> 
>    -
> 
>    we will check for whether this tag is valid or is already added to the
>    resource.
>    -
> 
>    If it is valid and it is not added to the resource, we will ad the tag
>    using insert (key,value) of QmultiHash object.
> 
> 
> *whenever a tag is searched, we call the function filterTagObjects (string)*
> 
> 
>    -
> 
>    we will check the resource and tag pair exists in the QmultiHash object
>    using find(key,value) function.
>    -
> 
>    Resources names can be retrieved from m_resources list in
>    koResourceServer
>    -
> 
>    If resource and tag pair found, we will display that resource.
> 
> 
>  *whenever a tag is deleted, we will call the function
> deleteTagObjects(koResource, string) *
> 
>    -
> 
>    we will check for the resource and tag pair as in filterTagObjects() .
>    -
> 
>    we will delete that tag using remove function of QmultiHash object.
> 
>    We also add two other functions
> 
>    *writeToXML()* - this one will be called at the end of the program, which
>    saves the data in the QmultiHash object in a XML file in gimp tags.xml
>    format.
> 
>    *ReadFromXML()* - this one will be called at the start up to retrieve the
>    tags and store them in QmultiHash object.
> 
>    I think for providing auto completion, we need to store tags in
>    QstringList.
> 
>     This the idea of the tagging and its implementation details. Please give
>    me your feed back ....
> 
> 
>  UI Pictures are not in this mail, but they are present in the pdf and odt
> > files attached to this mail
> >
> 
> 
> Regards
> Srikanth Tiyyagura
> 


-- 
Boudewijn Rempt | http://www.valdyas.org, http://www.krita.org