[KPhotoAlbum] order criteria for a family photo collection

[Heinz Kohl]

Am Dienstag 06 Februar 2007 22:55 schrieb jedd:
> On Wednesday 07 February 2007 4:06 am, Michael J Gruber wrote:
>  ] I don't want to be nitpicking, but 
>  ] The sorting, otoh, appears to be very limited: sort by date (ascending
>  ] or descending) and manual sort.
>
>  You're quite right.  

Yes, KPhotoalbum has nothing which might be called 'sorting' beside the wish 
to find unique time stamps to make up a primary time key.
Sorry, but exactly to set up this mechanism is called 'sorting' in 
KPhotoalbum, beginning with the initialisation ("Images are not sorted" 
because of "incomplete (time) dates"), and I used this elsewhere unusual 
naming just to be understood.
To have no (unique) primary key is resulting in "will only work suboptimal" - 
and that's the case not only when "navigating using the date bar".

>  I think a lot of us have similar, and possibly equally 'non-standard'
>  sets of photographs .. so I'll be curious to see how others react
>  to this problem description.

That can be expected to be the case for most image collections.
It's well known, that less than 5% of all photo imaging worldwide is done in 
family imaging.
Look at photo collections of buildings (including details), coins, plants, 
stamps, drawings, ships, watches, autographs, soccer players and so on.
O.k., time stamps are often necessary, but most times not of main interest.
Most collections are having own inherent primary keys - to sort plants with 
main respect to photo date instead of Linne's ordering system would be as 
crazy as sorting family pictures in respect to an ordering scheme for 
animals.

Is there any necessity to pack aunt Nelly between page 135 and 136 of a 
bible's page collection because of the image date?
Is there really any necessity to manage the picture of your ancestors in tight 
connection e.g. with an historical car archive, or to get the connection 
between the old testating aunt and e.g. vultures or old furniture? 

If you would have a program flexible enough to store your different hobby 
collections in an adequate manner - would you really use another program only 
able to store family pictures?

I think, a program like KPhotoalbum is by far too complicated to be restricted 
to such a small spectrum, there's nothing, what's unnecessary for other 
purposes, and with a relatively small amount of work it's possible to make 
the necessary enhancements to make it generally usable.
And nearly all thinkable enhancements would also enhance the usability as 
family picture album.

E.g. I could use such a program to make a better chronological ordering of my 
pictures, and without the repetitive need to explain, why I've abused time 
for a plain numbering while setting up some very imperfect replacement.

Heinz