Re: GSOC 2011

[Sven Utcke <sven utcke gmx de>]

Hello Peter and Simon,

> I think it's a worthwhile project, certainly.  I've dabbled with
> F-Spot as a user, but I don't really use it.  However, if it were
> cloud-enabled, I might be able to make good use of it.

That certainly would be a nice feature.  And most of it is actually
already there!

> Another option, 3: Use a server-side SQLite
> <http://www.sqlite.org/cvstrac/wiki?p=SqliteNetwork> instead of a
> local SQLite.

This depends on the focus: if you can be sure to always be online,
this is absolutely the way to go.  But what if you are in a place with
limited internet access?  You would at least want to be able to load
the images on your computer anyway, wouldn't you (of course you could
just copy them someplace, then import later, when back online)?

> Then like #1, synchronize the picture folder on a file-by-file
> basis.

Well, F-Spot already stores URIs, so all it needs is a way to access
all desired URIs.  That ought to be fairly easy to add for at least
the most common ones (html, ftp, maybe webDAV).  But there's again the
problem that you might want to first store the pictures locally, and
upload once connected.  Maybe you even want a local file-cache for the
N most currently accessed files, for offline-editing etc?

> And a crazy (but cool) option, 4: use Flickr as the primary image
> store.  Probably with a server-side SQLite to handle metadata, and
> of course, local thumbs 

Thumbs are handled by Gnome and are always local anyway.  So as long
as you assume an always online machine, a proof of concept
implementation should need only a few evenings at most.  Wrapping that
up nicely, of course...

> and optional synchronizing of local/remote full images.

Now, _that_ might turn out to be the real hurdle (but also the thing
really needed)

> >1. Store all metadata inside the image files or as sidecars, and then
> >   synchronize the picture folder on a file-by-file basis.

Storing metadata in files is evil :-)

> >2. Create a specialized server software to handle the metadata
> >   syncing and file transfers.

This really ought to be able to work using just standard server
software (REST, preferably).  Would be a bit on the slow side, but
then, compared to _up_loading your images to the server trough the
A(for asymmetric)DSL bottleneck, everything else will be greased
lightning.

> >  * Support downloading pre-generated thumbnails for a set of images.

Thumbnails are handled outside F-Spot.  Really.

> >So, are there any thoughts on this? Is it a worthwhile project?

If you manage something that does not need to be online all the time:
absolutely!  That would be a fairly unique selling point.

If it needs to be online all the time: Well... 

But still, if it can use flickr and Co. (and, as I said, that ought to
be dead easy --- maybe it can even now?), that still should buy you
some goodwill from a lot of people (not me, though).

Sven
-- 
  .xxxx.       FACE-Tools                                      |||||
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