[Debtags-devel] Another example of Faceted Categorization in Debian

Enrico Zini enrico@enricozini.org
Mon, 4 Apr 2005 21:55:39 +0200


On Thu, Mar 24, 2005 at 12:53:28PM +0000, Peter Rockai (mornfall) wrote:
> On Monday 21 March 2005 01:46, Hervé Eychenne wrote:
> I think kimdaba is using some weird xml to store it's metadata. And digikam (a 
> better looking, IMO better designed and nicer to use package; it provides a 
> lot of tag/facet functionality already and more is in the works) is using 

I've just checked out digikam, and I've been a bit disappointed.

The interface is quite cumbersome (to add a tag to an image you have to
navigate on a huge menu full of other stuff: much more than the ~7
maximum items limit that avoids to generate confusion).  Plus the menu
is big, and the entry that opens the tags tents to get hidden and to
display in different places depending on the position of the image you
click.

And it's not faceted: it has a hierarchy of tags instead.  Which brings
no special benefit at the cost of encouraging mess.

And you can't combine tags: I can chose, me or my girlfriend, but I have
no way to ask about pictures with both together.

Still quite far from being an interesting example of faceted
categorization: f-spot is still the best example I've seen so far with
images[1].


Ciao,

Enrico

[1] Which doesn't mean it's the most useful one: at least until they
stabilise the database format, and possibly until they find a better
name: there's no way I can connect f-spot with pictures, and to dig the
name out I have to look at the reverse dependencies for mono :(

P.S.
OTOH, I tried kimdaba, I asked for the demo, and I spent 1 minute and a
half without understanding how to see what pictures are in the demo and
how to display one.  Then I gave up.

--
GPG key: 1024D/797EBFAB 2000-12-05 Enrico Zini <enrico@debian.org>