[Bug 40154] Re: [Bug 40154] Re: Gthumb's behavior inconsistent with rest of system and coutnerproductive

[fallingcow]

I am using Dapper, actually.  I've not tried importing photos on a Breezy
box, so I'm not sure how it would behave.

I'm not sure that the problem is confined to this program--Gthumb just
happens to be the "photo manager"-type program that is used by default.
Since posting this bug initially, I've noticed that the "import photos"
functionality used by Ubuntu is tied to Gthumb, and not independent of it,
which is unfortunate.

What I'm saying is that, from a usability standpoint, automatically dropping
the user into a specialized program for photo management after importing
photos from a camera is a fundamentally broken action, unless the same
program is *always* used by default when the user enters a folder
predominantly contains images, or unless it makes it VERY clear to the user
a) that this is not their regular file manager and b) *why* this program has
been opened rather than a simple Nautilus window, in which they would
normally see photos when browsing around their home folder.

Otherwise, any time the user sees photos from another source (the web or
email, or saved from a previous OS), the interface and process for dealing
with *those* photos is different from that presented when he or she plugs in
a camera and imports photos.

This problem is compounded by the fact that Gthumb in particular strongly
resembles a Nautilus window with a tree-view left sidebar.

As using Gthumb to open all folders containing a large number of photos
would create entirely new problems, as well as being difficult to make
happen in the first place, that does not seem to be a reasonable solution.
I would recommend one of the following:

1. Use another program as the default photo manager, rather than Gthumb.
Preferably one that is less-similar to Nautilus.  I'm not sure what the
development status is on F-Spot, but at least it *looks* like a photo
manager, unlike Gthumb.  Any other program would do, as long as it is more
user-friendly and overtly helpful than Gthumb.

2. Use some kind of stand-alone camera interface to snag the photos, and
when that dialogue is finished, send the user to a Nautilus window with the
photo folder open.  I'm not even sure that there *is* a stand-alone photo
importing interface that matches the ease-of-use of the one in Gthumb (ha,
the one thing it gets right!) or in F-Spot, but if there is, it could be
used here.

In my opinion, either of these would be better than the current solution.
They both seem about equally good to me, though for different reasons.

Again, I'm sorry if this isn't the proper place to discuss this sort of
problem, but I'd seen it suggested in the forums that the bug reporting
system was intended both for true bugs (I.E. "software package X crashes
when I do this") and for suggestions (I.E. "it makes no sense that Ubuntu
does Y when such-and-such thing happens, it should do Z instead").

-- 
Gthumb's behavior inconsistent with rest of system and coutnerproductive
https://launchpad.net/bugs/40154