shotwell

Jozef,

thanks for filing this ticket – several users have asked for this. This is a reasonable idea. I don't think we'll have time to implement this for 0.7 (coming next month), but it's a strong candidate for a release soon after that.

When you will work to implement this feature, please think about implementing also a NOT function for selecting multiple tags. I'll explain with an example.

Suppose that I have:

some photos tagged: “New York, Fun”

some photos tagged: “New York, Work”

some photos tagged: “New York, Sport”

some photos tagged: “New York, Dance”

some photos tagged: “New York, Shopping”

It is reasonable that sometimes I want to see all the photos concerning New York, but I don't want to see photos concerning Work (they are so boring!)… it will be interesting to have a feature in shotwell to select all photos tagged “New York” and NOT tagged with “Work”

I know that implementing this feature without hurting the clear UI design is more difficult than what proposed by Jozef, but maybe is possible ;-)

Best regards

@clem:

Note that we have a separate ticket (#1587) for letting the user perform complex searches. Once that ticket is implemented, you'll be able to combine criteria using in any way you like using NOT, AND or OR operations. This ticket describes a simpler search mechanism that would let the user select multiple tags in the sidebar to perform an AND. We may possibly implement both these features.

Complex queries is a must have, to me too.

Would you mind taking a look at MetaTracker, a possible backend that would provide for great features such as metadata parsing, tagging and complex queries… all at once. I'd love to see Shotwell and Tracker integrated for it is my Desktop search engine… so having photos tags not available without “exporting” them first would be a pitty. http://projects.gnome.org/tracker/

Tracker support is something we're considering: #1890

By the way complex queries would make additional mechanisms such as “rejected” useless… that is worth a lot to me in terms of usability where less (cumbersome) is more (efficiency).

Anyone could have his own interpretation of “rejected” or “favorite” based on a combination of tags and treshold on score… for instance.

Yes please. In fact, I had naively assumed that this was part of the whole benefit of 'tagging'. That one can do quick intersections, or unions on tags.

I understand the 'idea' of allowing complex searches, perhaps via some other mechanism, but could I suggest the following;

1. Intersection be the simple default action when using ctrl-key or shift/mouse-click combination in selecting multiple tags (as it is what most people would expect)

2. Once tag selection is made (and intersection is already showing), left-mouse-click on one of the selected tags to trigger context sensitive menu would uncover the option to modify the default action, to;

a) simple union

b) more complex search (which then brings up an extra dialog allowing the individual union/intersection/%(=caps)NOT%) on the selected tags.

At the least, intersection and union should be quick and simple tasks, I would think.

Great software, great interface, almost there ;)

No, it is not just you.

I would expect the selecting of multiple tags to produce the logical intersection of the photo collection. That is;
if I had many photos, some tagged;
'New york', 'Fun',
'New york', 'Sad',
'New york', 'Work',

and I were to select both 'New york' and 'Fun' tags,
I would then see only those photos that were tagged with both 'New york' and 'Fun'.

In fact, just as the search (ctrl-f) in version 0.10.1 works now.

As I use shotwell, I realize that my initial interest in the feature this issue tries to describe drops, as the search functionality basically achieves all I ever needed. And the behaviour when selecting the actual tags from the tree pane on the left, should stay as is
(I am guessing it was never meant to be used as a search function per se).

In version 0.10.1, if I use the ctrl-f search function, and type in two tags in this search box, shotwell will show me an intersection of those two tags.

If I were to ask for an improvement in the search functionality, I would provide two things (maybe the two others as well):

1. a checkbox next to the search (ctrl-f) which lets you toggle between intersection and union (with intersection being default, and the application remembering your last check-box usage)
2. an advanced search dialog box, which lets you construct a more complicated select (i.e., ('New york' AND 'Fun' AND NOT 'Central Park'))
3 (maybe). the Search itself could be suggestion assisted (i.e., as you type more than 2 letters, it could show a list of existing tags which start with those letters you have typed.
4. a tip at application start-up, which helps new users figure out how to use shotwell correctly (including using search, and not the tag list on the left, for doing searches)

And the current behaviour of the tag items in the tree pane on the left should just stay the same, because it is anyway too difficult to scroll through all the tags you eventually accumulate and click multiple of these. Not usable.

Additional note for potential/future implementer:

I recently had a need to do a search for a specific set of photos, and discovered that even with the 'saved search' I was unable to produce what I required.

My father, recently deceased, had been very sick for 6 months before this.
I tagged all photos of him during these 6 months as 'sick'.
Then I wanted to create a search set of photos of both my mum and my dad. I.e. NOT photos which have both tags dad and mum (intersection),
but a union of the photos ('dad', 'mum', and 'mum, dad') but didn't include those photos when he was sick ('sick').

I hoped I could use the 'saved search' function to do an 'any' search, with:
1. tag matches 'mum'
2. tag matches 'dad'
3. tag doesn't match 'sick'

yet it didn't work as hoped. Any combination (any, all (didn't expect 'all' to work)) didn't bring me success.
the only way I was in the end able to do any such search, is to search: any 'mum' and 'dad', rate all the non-sick photos better than the 'sick' photos, and filter using the rating. Ok, so I eventually did it, but it was not easy.

Highlighted for me just how much a proper solution in shotwell for search, be it saved or on the fly, would be really helpful.