Time is nigh for the 0.2 release for solang.
First of all a news: We have a solang-users list now.
Before we go into the details of the next release, I would like to address some issues and questions that were raised as a part of the comments to my blog and on this blog.
First of all MANY, MANY thanks for the interest. We are very happy you have noticed this project.
1) Solang is NOT an f-spot "clone". It contains / will contain features that f-spot may or may not ever have. (Searching using multiple dates, searching using photo-property, paginated browsing etc). It also lacks a lot of features that f-spot even currently provides (A plethora of editing options and filters etc)
2) Jaunty compilation issue: The git version of solang should be compilable. Exiv version 0.18 has been supported. The author of this article has been kind enough to test it out.
3) In-photo tagging: We are NOT planning to do this. Instead we plan to do something better... we plan to port solang to windows in the near future. The back end database path will be made configurable, so that the database may be placed in some shared user area visible to all OS installations on a host.
4) Import from f-spot: We are planning to do this probably in the next release. If this is an immediate requirement, please let us know on solang-users mailing list and we will try to make a patch release for this after the 0.2 release.
5) Exif-IPTC editing... we haven't decided yet .. but maybe soon enough ..
A request to all users, please file bugs at Solang Project Page (needs login). Also, we are available at sane indian working hours (and sometimes even the insane ones) on the #solang room on irc.freenode.net. Feel free to drop in to let us know of feature requests, any required build assistance, rants and whatever you feel like (we discuss movies also on the room .. :-P)
Okay, so, for the next release we present the following feature list:
1) Paginated views for memory and speed efficiency (in git already)
2) Icon zooming in browser view (in git already)
3) Undoable delete feature for tags and photos (partially in git)
4) Undoable basic editing (flip/rotate/scale) (underway)
5) Batch editing of pictures (hopefully) (TBD)
6) An importer from flickr (Underway)
7) A basic exporter that exports selected photos to a directory (hopefully through a basic editing pipeline) (TBD)
Another thing... it would be nice if someone could find the time to create some user documentation for solang... otherwise, it will take some time for us to come up with a decent doc for this.
Okay, enough talk... back to coding... and we are waiting to hear from you.
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Monday, June 1, 2009
Solang...
Long is the way And hard, that out of Hell leads up to light
After many a long day and sleepless night we are pleased to announce Solang, a (or yet another if you may please) photo manager for GNOME.
Why solang? Well, I have a busted old laptop (a worn out HP NX6115 with 512 MB RAM) that aches and burns to manage my photo collection using the so called state-of-the-art foo written in the state-of-the-art bar language. So we thought, maybe re-inventing some wheels are not totally misplaced excursions of the mind. Besides I need to get something that runs on my ol' buddy.
Solang will not become a one-stop-shop for all photographic needs. We may never decide to give top-notch editing support in Solang. IMO, the UFRAW, RawStudio, Gimp and CinePaint stack do quite nicely for RAW processing and general photo-retouching. Solang will try to act a front-end for all photo-storage containers (Folders, CD/DVD, PicasaWeb, Flickr etc). We also want fast operation, powerful search capabilities and a flexible and extensible design.
The first developer version of Solang is available at: https://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/solang
Unfortunately the Savannah servers have gone Kaput!! for a few days. I am sure the good folks at GNU will get them back online soon enough. For the time being solang can also be found at: http://rishi.fedorapeople.org/solang/
Please checkout the README file before you do anything. Use at your own risk!!
Also practically speaking there may be som changes in the back-end database in the later releases. Oh and one more thing, currently you cannot delete anything (Tags/Photos) from Solang. We are working on an undoable deletion system. Should be committed shortly.
Feedback on this will be highly appreciated. You can also subscribe to solang-devel list. We will start a solang-users list after a few days.
Below are some screenshots of Solang in action:
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