A little while back, Mike Gemünde (tigger) wrote one of the nice features that will be present in the upcoming F-Spot release (really soon!): the folder bar. What is this? It's a new sidebar page that shows the folders in which your photos are located and allows you to browse them by folder.

While we still believe that you shouldn't be bothered with files and directories in F-Spot (and focus on photos), it's impossible to hide this completely: laptop users can't store all their photos on the internal disk and often need an external hard disk. And some users are really fond of their directory structure. We're not trying to impose anything and this is a first step to give the users the freedom they want: browsing by directory. This is in git right now and will be present in the upcoming release.

Future things we should support can include things like support for external USB hard-disks. Want to see that happening? Come over and have a chat, we're always looking for extra developers and user interface designers.

Thanks for this killer feature, guys!

I know a lot of people are very picky about the structure and naming of their files, maybe lifting the code from Banshee that to let people overload the naming with a boo script would make them happy.

it is the one thing that is holding me back in using f-spot... the fact that f-spot overrules my folder structure and completely makes its own tree structure according to the date of the pics. Please, please let me CHOOSE whether I want this or not. Let me CHOOSE for my self if I want to be bothered with files and directories. I think I can manage that. I can't manage the other way around... You can let the default way be what you like, but please give me an option to keep and use my own folder structure!!

Otherwise I will (have to) stick with digikam. Which is fine, but f-spot is better integrated in a gnome environemnt.

Greetz,
deech

A bit too lazy right now to go beyond here to do it, but I want to give my +1 for supporting external hard drives. It's something I have wanted for a while :)

As far as how that should work, I think F-Spot should store thumbnails for all images locally, but support moving a photo to a backup disk, in the process removing it from the local disk. (Could be neatly referred to as "archiving"). In that process, the user could easily describe the disk he is sticking the stuff on (great for burning dvds). The photo would be easily available from the browsing view, then when the user tries to open it a message could appear asking to insert the disk it is known to be on.

However it's done, though, I will seek out and hug the person who implements that feature.

Oh, support for external drives would be great, especialy if it would also work for dvd's. I mean you could store just thumbnails on the main drive and when the user wants to open it display something like "please insert volume foo" where foo would either be the volume label or a label chosen by the user...

I agree with Deech. I like F-spot a lot but don't use it only because it moves my existing pictures out of their original folders. There is no need for that, my pictures are already well arranged per subject/vacation and I prefer it that way.

So I'm excited to experiment with this new feature!

Guys, you can place your pictures wherever you want on the filesystem, and import them WITHOUT copying to Photos folder, so leaving the directory structure as preferred.
Yes, it's almost a workaround, but until the new import dialog comes to life, it can be an option! ;)

hi,
i tried it, and i am really sorry to say, but it is a complete mess! All the pics are there, but the folder structure in the folder tab is a total chaos. It displays a treestructure that is not there, showing folders nested inside others that are nested inside others, etc, while they should be top level folders. Anyone else with the same experience??

@deech, likely to be fixed here:

http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=591295

http://git.gnome.org/cgit/f-spot/commit/?id=4ab23e5fa9ea8ad78fa777f00d704f884abda28e

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