How should the Tray work? Have your say

[Paul Barrett]

In case you didn't know yet Paul, this already works today:

Either right mouse click on one or more tray items and select "Put Items into Collection" to place the selected items into a collection or click the Settings button on the upper right and click "Put Items into Collection" to put the entire tray into a collection.

However, you have to manually type the name of the collection (otherwise, you could also drag and drop). If he collection already exists and is not empty, the tray members are added.

 

Yes I could, but I am a lazy b*****d and just want all that s**t to happen in the background while I get on with want I want to do.

 

- Paul

 

 

 

 

[Paul Barrett]

I have been playing with the Create Collections from a Tray idea. But I have some issues with it.

 

 

 

1. To restate my earlier issue, I have to invoke the command manually and then I have to assign name manually. I need that to be happening in the background with no intervention from me

 

2. A user preference setting is probably required to toggle that on/off according to user needs.

 

3. Having thought about is some more, if I continue to add (or delete) items from the tray the app needs to update the existing collection automatically without further intervention. It should not create a new collection for every change that is made, because the number of collections would run away.

 

4. But there's a showstopper for me because the app writes the collection information to the image metadata (XMP section)

 

I do not want that, for these reasons:

4.1

For me the tray is just a workbench, a temporary collection of random items that I want to work on.

They may not even be related in any way, other than I have chosen them to work on. In that use case there is no reason why I should want or need the collection information to be written to the files.

 

4.2

Any metadata update immediately triggers a reindexing and thumbnail generation process in Synology Photo Station

. This is unnecessary as there is no material difference in the image. I work with auto-sync on. I will never remember to toggle it on/off before / after using the tray. It's not an elegant method.

 

4.3 As expected,

removing an item from the tray does not remove the tag from the file's metadata

. And as far as I can see there's no way to remove an individual item from a collection, so

the metadata will stay in the file until you delete the collection.

 

4.4 And

when you delete the Collection and the tag is removed from the files(s) ,Synology Photo Station will have to reindex and convert the file again to restore it to it's original state.

 

So if we are going to use Collection there would need to be a system preference 'Do not write Collection information to metadata - On/Off'. I say system preference because the adverse result is happening at system level.

 

Is all of this stretching the limits of what the Collections were designed for? I don't know.

 

 

I conclude it might be better to have a dedicated 'Tray History' panel for which the entries are held in the catalog not the files.

-Paul

Edited March 19, 2017 by Paul Barrett

[Daria Kotilainen]

Hi guys,

 

We have thoroughly discuss all the suggestions with Alex and here are the results (not final, of course).

 

First of all, I personally found Uwe's suggestion (posted on March 18) very reasonable and working for me, except 4.1. I'm not sure if I want to have a predefined interconnection of the thumbnail view and the tray view. What if I accidentally click the tray and loose the focus in the thumbnail window? If a new search is made, I can go one step back and get the previous window, but still have to scroll down to the desirable item. In my case, a shortcut allowing to align two views would be perfect.

Alex also shares this concern (accidental click in the tray > focus lost in TB) but doesn't say anything for or against the shortcut. He believes we need some more opinions because four users, even if the most powerful ones, are not all Daminion's users. Sorry guys :(

 

1. Tag assignment - no, it's already done or has to be done in the Thumbnail Window

 

Besides, Alex said that it was the users who suggested to add this feature to the Tray and we just can't simply roll it back right now.

 

What the developers are going to do in the nearest future is to fix the issue with two active images in the Tray and TB (Wilfried and I were talking about it earlier in this topic). The guys admit that this bug is pretty nasty.

In general, they are going to improve the Tray's functionality step by step, rather than in one go and therefore we still need more opinions.

 

Paul, I'm sorry to say you that, but all the collection things within the Tray will remain as they are now. It's a very easy and fast way to create a collection, besides you can add the items from the tray to the existing collections just by dragging and dropping them.

 

Hope, all I said doesn't sounds disappointing? The discussion is not closed. Let's just see what other users think. :)

 

Kind regards,

Daria

[Paul Barrett]

In general, they are going to improve the Tray's functionality step by step, rather than in one go and therefore we still need more opinions.

 

Paul, I'm sorry to say you that, but all the collection things within the Tray will remain as they are now. It's a very easy and fast way to create a collection, besides you can add the items from the tray to the existing collections just by dragging and dropping them.

 

Hope, all I said doesn't sounds disappointing? The discussion is not closed. Let's just see what other users think. :)

 

Kind regards,

Daria

 

Hey, I'm just expressing my opinion. If others disagree that's fine. If you're going to improve it in steps though surely we need a vision of what the end state is going to look like to avoid developing interim states that are incompatible.

 

Yes let's get more opinion from other people. How would you do that? The topic's been on the forum for weeks now and only the four of us have replied. Is the silence of other users assent? Or.... lack of interest in the topic?

 

Regards

 

Paul