[KPhotoAlbum] KDE4 svn (rev834494) comments & test report

[Jesper K. Pedersen]

First, please report bugs to bugs.kde.org, I know its much more a pain to you, 
but if they are reported like this, I'm very likely to drop them on the 
ground.

On Saturday 19 July 2008, Risto H. Kurppa wrote:
| Hi!
|
| I installed the SVN version with the instructions on the KPA website
| on a 64-bit KDE4.1rc1 Kubuntu Hardy. I tried earlier to install it
| without the extra KDE3 libraries (to the real KDE4 dirs) but didn't
| succeed. But anyway, here are some comments and stuff. Let me know if
| there's anything worth reporting to kde bug tracker:
|
| - When starting the demo database, the first tip I got was 'this is
| the last tip'. I was able to find the rest of the tips with the arrow
| buttons.
Odd no idea about that.
|
| - Generally I like the looks of KDE4 :)
thats a feature not a bug dammit! :-)

| - When in search dialog when I:
|    select a text input box with a mouse
|    start typing a name of a tag
|    the list is dynamically edited and a tag there is selected
|    but I can't use enter to select a tag and fill in another one.
| Earlier this has been possible but I noticed in 3.1.1 (Ubuntu Hardy)
| the same unwanted behavior. Is this KPA or KDE4 that has something
| wrong?
Thats sounds like a bug, please report.

| - the slideshow dialogs ('starting slideshow' and time delay boxes)
| are ugly on the yellow background. Is there a change to use something
| nicer. I like the style Amarok uses for it's OSD :)
I'm really not an artist, so this is the best I can do. I'd say file it as a 
bug, and maybe someone will pick it up.

| - I like the statistics menu item. Good idea with the 'if you have a
| tag to indicate an image has been tagged, specify it here'. Too bad
| that I use tags to indicate images that have NOT been tagged :) but
| anyway..
Well my plan was to show both tagged and untagged images there, but 
unfortunatly the problem is that the DB backend do not support me with the 
right information, so while lots is still broken from the port, and rather 
not spend more time one it. I developed that dialog as I broke my own DB 
while using early versions of KPA, and wanted to double check my fixes to it.

| - I would like to see 'eventes' as one of the default categories to
| tag 'birthdays' or 'parades' or so. I know some use 'keywords' for
| this, I myself use keywords for 'car', 'dog', 'building' and so on. (
| I even created me a 'animal' category with latin / english animal
| names when spending a summer in Costa Rica and had good books where to
| define the names. But now it's mostly useless :). Hmm.. This and the
| previous point gives me the idea to create a category for metatags,
| like 'photos by someone else but me', 'peoples need to be
| tagged/recognized', 'place needs to be tagged/defined' and so on..
Well I guess we could never agree on the right categories, which is why anyone 
can add their own categories. I could agree on renaming the default from 
keywords to events, but I dont want even more categories by default.

Please add this as a wishlist item to the bugtracker.

| - Open list of files - what's this? You can type in file names to do what?
I'm not sure what you are talking about.

| - for snapshots I home you remove menu items like 'convert backend..
| Experimental'.. If it's not meant to be used, please remove it..
well it is only there if you compile using the --SQLBACKEND option (or 
whatever it is called) - if your distributions does so then it is a bug.

| - plugins menu is empty for me (right, I know I don't have kipi
| plugins or -dev installed). Would it be possible to hide this if
| plugins are not installed? Would it be good or should it be left there
| to indicate a user that it might be possible to have plugins or will
| the user think that KPA is broken because of not showing plugins
| there?
Please file a bug saying that it is empty - IMO it should contain one menu 
item saying "why is this empty" bringing up a dialog telling about kipi. Then 
again, 99% of the users should use KPA from a distro in which case it would 
be a bug in the distro if KIPI was not installed along with KPA.
|
| - generally I think KPA is not very responsive for some reason: for
| the settings dialog to open I have to wait for 1-3 seconds
This is a general KDE dialog with lots of content, I dont really know what I 
could do about that - except bring up the busy cursor earlier on.

| - the green bars in the date/time/whatever bar in the main view are
| not that nice looking either: some kind of support for KDE theme
| colours would be nice there as well
same as above, this is the best I can do, not being an artist.

| - To select/ limit to a time frame, you have to know to press the
| mouse button down on the time scale, not on the boxes of the time bar.
| I think this is not that easy for a new user to find. I suggest that
| all the selections (also jumping to a specific time) would be made on
| the white area of the time bar, not on the date text.
dude, you are three years late with that suggestion, I asked for help on 
interactions when I developed it :-)
Fell free to think the whole interaction through, and file a bug, and I'll 
have a look once we are done porting.

| - How about moving the 'reset the time limit' red button from left to
| the right where all other buttons are as well? The small button is
| difficult to notice on the left.
Well I was trying to save on screen estate (space)

| - I think the Home button should also reset the time limit. To really
| take home & show all images
Indeed, please file as a bug

| - the order of the buttons in the toolbar could be changed a bit. This
| is my recommendation based on konqueror and openoffice toolbar button
| order:
| save|back forward home refresh | copy find | run slideshow    || searchbar
| or
| save|back forward home refresh | copy | run slideshow | find || searchbar
I'm not even sure if I possition them myself or if KDE does, but please file 
as a suggestion

| - How about adding icon view and list view buttons as default in the
| toolbar? And by default use the custom icons, if they're set.
There is a UI rule of thumb that you should not have more than 7 items in the 
toolbar, less than 7 help you find it instantly, otherwise it is linear 
search, so I actually removed them when doing the port.

| - I added the list view and icon view buttons in the toolbar. Pressed
| the icon view button and KPA crashed:
| ASSERT: "category.data()" in file
| /home/rhk/Ohjelmat/KPA-kde4/extragear-graphics/kphotoalbum/Browser/BrowserW
|idget.cpp, line 265
| Same happens every time with list & icon view buttons with the same message
please file as a bug

| - and actually after this I lost some buttons from the toolbar: home,
| copy, save, find are missing!
|
| - How about new photos for the KPA demo database? I think it's cool
| that Jesper has provided some 'live footage' but I think they might
| not be that hmm.. attractive material for people. It's the same as
| when you're trying to sell your house, you're not supposed to have any
| personal stuff (photos. toothbrush and so on) there but something that
| anyone could have and identify with. So maybe some nice animal shots,
| flowers, landscapes and so on? Maybe we all here on the list could
| provide some photos for Jesper? Hmm.. ok, since I cannot code I'll
| volunteer to create a new demo database. I'll write another mail about
| this soon.
I'll answer than mail then.

|
| Well ok, this for now.. Next I'll start my real database, this was
| with the demo database..
|
| (ok, need to recompile & stuff to get the exif stuff working.. )
|
| - Starting a new KPA installation you have the option to choose
| 'Feature check'. Here all the texts are blue and underlined (plug-ins
| available, exif info supported and all those) so one could think
| they're links. But nothing happens when I try to click on them. Not
| good.
The feature check dialog is broken right now, and need to be reworked, it is 
actually next on my list

| - Feature check says Plug-ins available: yes but no kipi plugins in the
| menu?
|
| - OK, when I open the feature status tool from menu I see that they
| really are links.. Hmm.. I think either the links should be removed
| from the start-> feature check or the button should open this feature
| status tool that also shows how to solve this problem and the links
| make sense..
|
| - I tried to enable more features, another mail about that, I need
| some help there..
|
|
| That's it for now. I'll try to enable more features before trying
| KDE4-kpa with my real database.
|
|
| So you're welcome to ask more details and comment and so on.
|
|
| r

Thanks for your comments and suggestion, I really appreciate it.

-- 
Having trouble finding a given image in your collection containing
thousands of images?

http://www.kphotoalbum.org might be the answer.