[KPhotoAlbum] order criteria for a family photo collection

[Shawn Willden]

On Thursday 08 February 2007 03:57, Heinz Kohl wrote:
> Sorry - KPA is forcing to drive only one single archive.

No, you can use multiple KPA archives.  Doing so could perhaps be made a bit 
easier if KPA were to prompt for which of the archives you want to use during 
startup.  However, I don't think it would be a good idea to use multiple 
archives.  KPA gives you all of the tools to be able to use one archive and 
still slice and dice it in almost any way imaginable.

> And it is lacking a method to implement other than explicitely defined
> enumeration data.
> That's not the right way to build a complete taxonomy.

I don't think I understand this comment.

While it's true that the categorization of photos in KPA is into explicitly 
enumerated "tags", the set of enumerated values is implicitly defined by 
adding them to photos.  You do have to pre-define the top-level categories 
(which, by default are Event, Keywords, People, etc.) but within those 
categories you enumerate a new sub-category simply by naming it when you 
apply it to a photo.

And, of course, you can add whatever top-level categories you like.

In your case, I think you want to add a top-level category called "Scan 
Batch", and the names of the categories you apply to photos within this 
top-level category would be the numeric batch identifiers.

That would enable you to solve the problem you described as:

>   Again and again I've the problem to find photos in the same scanning
> environment (e.g. to find other scans of negatives of the same negative
> bag).

To find the set of photos from the same bag, you would simply run KPA, click 
on the "Scan Batch" category, be presented with a list of batch numbers, and 
then click on the batch number whose photos you want to look at.

If you want, you can even take it the next step, and add sub-categories within 
each batch number that represent the negative, and sub-categories within 
those that represent the frame in the negative.  You could then drill down 
through the batch category to whatever level makes sense.  You probably 
wouldn't want to take those additional steps because it looks like you don't 
have the negative and frame numbers recorded, but, in theory, you could do 
it.

I think the thing that is confusing all of us here is that you keep talking 
about the importance of sorting (in the sense of the word "ordering" -- keep 
in mind that the verb "sort" has multiple meanings in English), but *we* have 
never really seen a strong need to be able to order images, and you haven't 
presented any scenario where you would need to order images, either.

It's also worth noting that when KPA presents a list of categories they are 
sorted in lexicographical order, so if you name your batches with leading 
zeros (i.e. 00123 instead of 123), the list will be sorted in numerical 
order.

To all of the other participants in this thread, I would like to say that I 
applaud your restraint.  Heinz has been sufficiently aggressive with his 
criticism that on many lists someone would have responded with a flame.  It's 
very nice that the KPA community doesn't act like that.

	Shawn.