rawhide report: 20060110 changes [extras packages moved to core]

[Nicolas Mailhot]

On Mer 11 janvier 2006 16:16, Jeff Spaleta wrote:
> On 1/11/06, Nicolas Mailhot <nicolas.mailhot at laposte.net> wrote:
>> gthumb can be used for casual browsing/manipulation of any directory
>> containing image files
>
> Aren't there other ways already in Core to casually browse directories
> of images?
> Doesn't nautilus provide some functionality for casual viewing of
> images via eog?

It's not good enough.
If you only have 20-30 photos to preview you can do it but you can as well
import them in f-spot and delete them afterwards

The problem is when you have larger storages to browse (such as the new
flash memories that may have been kept in a camera for months, or a
picture CD, or whatever) nautilus + eog is insufficient and importing in
f-spot just to take a look at them is prohibitive (even on a fast system)

>> f-spot can not - in insists in importing/pre-processing ever picture
>> directory before making it available. So it's more a centralised picture
>> management app
>
> And i think a default application that is more centralized and more
> focused is very much consistent with previous fedora core
> functionality decisions.
> f-spot is to photos as rhythmbox is to music

And rhythmbox is not the only Fedora audio app. You have totem/helixplayer
which allow someone to play music without importing it in the rhythmbox
db.

>> Till f-spot gets a "casual browsing mode" it's not a real gthumb
>> replacement
>
> The question as to Core/Extras is never about feature-for-feature
> replacements. It's never about most features either.  The question is
> prioritization of functionality. You can not deny that there is
> significant overlap here between these applications and general
> function.

Just as there is significant overlap between totem and rhythmbox, gimp and
inkscape. In other words, if you simplify the picture too much yes they do
the same thing.

> The question becomes what is the primary functionality that
> Fedora Core is attempting to fill and how well does each candidate
> application fill that role.

That's an overly restrictive view, esp when we are not talking about
packages that weight hundreds of megs like openoffice. Or (in the gthumb
case) packages that do not pull in a ton of deps.

> As to the question of which functionality is more important.. casual
> browsing or centralized management. I'm not really sure casual
> browsing of images outside of the filemanager is that important
> compared to centralized photo management at this point.

It will be soonish.
Most people haven't have the time to accumulate big mounds of photos yet,
because digital cameras are new. But as soon as they have, well they'll
try to exchange photos between their huge photos archives, and the f-spot
way of importing the whole photo archive before you can cherry-pick from
it is not adapted in this case. (just try to import a few hundred megs of
photos, then look at the current flash sizes)

Remember, the average user will only zero his flash when he's forced to,
ie when it's nearly full.

Regards,

-- 
Nicolas Mailhot