Album views - completely broken IMHO

[Chris Green]

I have just been playing with the various View-Sort Album options
and it seems to me that they're completely pointless and/or broken.
The fundamental problem I think is that the View options don't seem to
think one can possibly have a hierarchy of albums.

OK, the default View-Sort Albums-By Folder is reasonably OK except
that there is no way of specifying the sort in the folders. What the
option *actually* means is sort albums alphabetically.  It would be
really, really nice if one could specify other sorts (i.e. like ls,
sort by modification date, extension, version, etc.).

I really can't see any point in View-Sort Albums-By Collection as all
that happens is that all albums in a specific collection are put in
one place in what is essentially the same order as you get in
View-Sort Albums-By Folder.  It includes empty albums and albums which
are just place holders in a hierarchy.

Similarly with View-Sort Albums-By Date.  I have albums in a (sort of)
date hierarchy, e.g. I have an album 1984 (which has no images in it)
and then albums within 1984, mostly for specific months, with images
in them.  If I set the date in the album properties for all my 1984
albums I get all the January 1984 albums displayed in '1984, January'
but they are ordered *alphabetically* - aarrgghh!!

Surely other users want to order images by date, with albums ordered
by date too, but in a hierarchy so one can view 1984 and see
everything in chronological order in 1984.  Am I missing something or
is this really not possible?


Everything else about digikam is just about perfect but this date
ordering is driving me crazy!  :-)

--
Chris Green
_______________________________________________
Digikam-users mailing list
[hidden email]
https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/digikam-users

[Chris Green]

On Thu, Jul 03, 2008 at 09:43:48PM +0100, Chris G wrote:
> I have just been playing with the various View-Sort Album options

[snip my rant about Album ordering]

> Everything else about digikam is just about perfect but this date
> ordering is driving me crazy!  :-)
>
I've just realised what I really want - I want "View-Sort Albums-By
Date" to do *exactly* that.  I.e. I want the view option to simply
change the sort order of my albums in the 'normal' view of my albums.
Preserve all the hierarchy I have carefully created by sorting each level
within that hiearchy by date.  This is surely quite simple in that
it's just a switch of the sort order in the normal 'View-Sort
Albums-By Folder' view, it doesn't require the extra complexity
currently needed for the different view options.

The only issue is that 'date' could mean either the
creation/modification date of the album/directory or it could mean the
date in the album properties.  Maybe one could be allowed to choose either.

My ideal would be to allow ordering albums by the date specified in the
album properties.

--
Chris Green
_______________________________________________
Digikam-users mailing list
[hidden email]
https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/digikam-users

[Arnd Baecker]

Hi Chris,

On Thu, 3 Jul 2008, Chris G wrote:

> On Thu, Jul 03, 2008 at 09:43:48PM +0100, Chris G wrote:
> > I have just been playing with the various View-Sort Album options
>
> [snip my rant about Album ordering]

;-)

> > Everything else about digikam is just about perfect but this date
> > ordering is driving me crazy!  :-)
> >
> I've just realised what I really want

Good!

> - I want "View-Sort Albums-By
> Date" to do *exactly* that.  I.e. I want the view option to simply
> change the sort order of my albums in the 'normal' view of my albums.
> Preserve all the hierarchy I have carefully created by sorting each level
> within that hiearchy by date.  This is surely quite simple

The relevant code is in
  digikam/albumfolderview.cpp
namely void AlbumFolderView::resort() which in turn makes
use of AlbumFolderViewItem* AlbumFolderView::findParent(...)
with calls depending on the value of getAlbumSortOrder().

In any case I would recommend to open a new wish in the BKO
(unless there is already one about this issue ...).

> in that
> it's just a switch of the sort order in the normal 'View-Sort
> Albums-By Folder' view, it doesn't require the extra complexity
> currently needed for the different view options.
>
> The only issue is that 'date' could mean either the
> creation/modification date of the album/directory or it could mean the
> date in the album properties.  Maybe one could be allowed to choose either.
>
> My ideal would be to allow ordering albums by the date specified in the
> album properties.

Yes; making this configurable could be done in a separate step.

Best, Arnd
_______________________________________________
Digikam-users mailing list
[hidden email]
https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/digikam-users

[Chris Green]

On Fri, Jul 04, 2008 at 12:30:59PM +0200, Arnd Baecker wrote:

> > - I want "View-Sort Albums-By
> > Date" to do *exactly* that.  I.e. I want the view option to simply
> > change the sort order of my albums in the 'normal' view of my albums.
> > Preserve all the hierarchy I have carefully created by sorting each level
> > within that hiearchy by date.  This is surely quite simple
>
> The relevant code is in
>   digikam/albumfolderview.cpp
> namely void AlbumFolderView::resort() which in turn makes
> use of AlbumFolderViewItem* AlbumFolderView::findParent(...)
> with calls depending on the value of getAlbumSortOrder().
>
> In any case I would recommend to open a new wish in the BKO
> (unless there is already one about this issue ...).
>

There's the one I already raised, number 156186, I've added a comment
to clarify/extend it a little. There are also a couple of other quite
similar requests from other people, in particular number 137386.

--
Chris Green
_______________________________________________
Digikam-users mailing list
[hidden email]
https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/digikam-users