F-Spot

From Exiflow

F-Spot is a full featured photo organizer for Gnome, written in C# using the MONO libraries. In version 0.4.0 the developers added both support for raw images and an extension interface. These features are what we have been waiting for, so we are keen to support F-Spot to accomplish a smooth workflow that is fun to work with and that doesn't infringe our principles.

Issues we are currently working on

• F-Spot has an extension that merges raw and jpeg versions, based on their names and EXIF dates. This doesn't work for exiflow revisions, so we need an own extension to merge raws and jpegs in exiflow file schema. A first working version of this extension exists in our SVN repository and is called MergeExiflow. There are some issues with tags that are dropped on merging. This problem is inherited from the original RawPlusJpeg extension from which I borrowed the merger code. Thankfully, Stephane Delcroix is looking after the problem. Being complete C# novices, we have a hard time writing and debugging our extensions.

• F-Spot generates filenames that are completely out of phase with our file naming scheme, e.g. "20051107-n00123-xy000 (Developed in UFRaw).jpg". To adapt this to our needs, we rewrote the existing DevelopInUFraw extension to generate filenames using proper exiflow revisions. Find it in our repository under the name DevelopInUFrawExiflow.

• We are writing an extension that takes the role of the existing "Create new version" menu entry because that one also creates file names of the type mentioned above. This extension brings up a dialog to let the user chose a revision number. The dialog shows an unused default. This extension is called ExiflowCreateVersion

• We also want to write an extension that brings up a dialog for one or more marked pictures that let's the user edit several EXIF data, such as Description, Place, Copyright etc. This functionality shall match (or outclass) GThumb's comment and keyword dialogs that are handy to edit several picture's properties at once. Currently, there is no option in F-Spot to edit metadata other than keywords and subject at all, let alone for a batch of pictures at once. Update: We have just finished the extension ExiflowEditComment which lets you edit the comment of multiple selected photos at once. Existing comments are collected and offered to be merged. As opposed to F-Spot's one line comment editor, this one also allows multi line comments.

Installing the extensions

For those wanting to test our F-Spot extensions, we created an addin repository that F-Spot can use. To use it, follow these instructions:

1. In F-Spot, open the menu entry Edit -> Manage Extensions
2. In the dialog shown, click Repositories
3. In the next dialog, click Add
4. Select Register an on-line repository and enter the URL http://exiflow.sf.net/f-spot-addins/main.mrep
5. Back in the extension manager's main window, click Install Add-ins
6. Now, click Update on either all registered repositories or just exiflow.sf.net
7. Finally, you should be able to select and install our extensions. Yay!