Solang NEWS                                    -*- outline -*-

* Noteworthy changes in release 0.4 (2010-01-22)

** New features

  Replaced our own database with Tracker. SPARQL is used to gain
  access to the meta information about the photos. Photos are in the
  Nepomuk desktop ontology represented by the class nmm:Photo [1].
  Tags are in the same ontology represented in its annotation
  section [2]. They are represented by the class nao:Tag.

  The folder importer is now obsolete and has been removed because
  Tracker automatically indexes all photos on the system.

  Photo meta-data are now obtained from Tracker instead of reading
  Exif directly.

  Improved thumbnail management. Rely on an implementation of the
  Thumbnail Management Specification [3], such as Tumbler, for creating
  thumbnails. Created thumbnails are now stored according to the
  Thumbnail Managing Standard [4].

  No separate editor renderer. Photos can now be edited directly in
  the enlarged renderer.

  Moved the UI controls for the browser render's pagination bar and
  zoomer to more standard locations. The previous and next buttons,
  and slider are now part of the main toolbar, while the currently
  displayed range is indicated in the status bar.

  UI cleanup. No text is shown in the thumbnail view and all additions
  or removals to the search basket are now automatic.

  New dependencies on GEGLmm, Tracker, D-Bus GLib and the
  org.freedesktop.thumbnails.xxx D-Bus services. Minimum required
  version of GEGL is 0.1.x.

  Dropped dependencies on Exiv2, Flickcurl, LibGdamm, LibGPhoto2,
  LibSoup and WebKit Gtk+.

** Regressions

  Camera and Flickr importers are absent.

  There is no date view or searching based on dates.

  Changes made to photos can not be saved and there is no undo/redo.

  The scale, brightness, contrast and saturation operations are missing
  from the editor.

  Tags do not have an icon associated with them.

** New and updated translations

  Bengali (India) (bn_IN), French (fr), Hebrew (he), Polish (pl).

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[1] http://library.gnome.org/devel/ontology/unstable/nmm-ontology.html
[2] http://www.semanticdesktop.org/ontologies/nao/
[3] http://live.gnome.org/ThumbnailerSpec
[4] http://jens.triq.net/thumbnail-spec/


* Noteworthy changes in release 0.3 (2009-09-17)

** New features

  A new logo and .desktop file.

  Context sensitive popup on right-clicking a photo in the browser
  renderer.

  Folder exporter to export selected photos to a folder.

  Improved editing abilities. A new GEGL based editing engine; and
  support for brightness, contrast, saturation and scaling. Of these
  only the first two operations are based on GEGL. The rest will be
  migrated as GEGL improves in the future.

  Introduced a histogram in the editor renderer and the property
  manager.

  It is now possible to copy a set of applied operations from one
  photo and paste it onto others.

  New vertical toolbox for the editor renderer. The flip, rotate and
  scale operations are now placed in this toolbox, and their
  corresponding entries have been removed from the menu.

  Support for slideshows.

  The date, property and tag managers, and the search basket are
  hidden when using the editor renderer.

  The main horizontal toolbar style has been set to "icons only".

  Use a black background for the photo when in fullscreen mode and do
  not draw a frame it.

  New dependencies on BABL and GEGL.

** New and updated translations

  Bulgarian (bg), Italian (it).


* Noteworthy changes in release 0.2 (2009-07-09)

** New features

  Pagination bar and zoomer for the browser renderer.

  Support for zooming within the enlarged renderer.

  UI elements for navigating within the browser renderer -- previous
  page, next page, first page and last page.

  Added a new non-deletable "All Photos" tag.

  Queue based object deletion framework. Ability to delete tags and
  remove them from selected photos.

  Flickr importer to import photos from Flickr.

  Editor infrastructure. A new editor renderer; and support for
  rotation, flipping, and undo, redo of operations.

  Various improvements to the importer dialog, importer, progress
  dialog and progress observer.

  New dependencies on Flickcurl, LibSoup and WebKit Gtk+.

  Ported to Exiv2 version 0.18.

  Removed dependency on GraphicsMagick++/ImageMagick++.

** Bug fixes

  Fixed the value of solangdocdir.


* Noteworthy changes in release 0.1 (2009-06-01)

** New features

  Browser and enlarged renderer for viewing the entire collection and
  a single photo respectively.

  Camera and folder importer to import photos from cameras in PTP mode
  and folders respectively.

  Date view for showing photo dates.

  Support for tagging photos and Exif data.

  Thumbnails for showing RAW files in the browser renderer.

  Search basket for drag and drop search using multiple tags, Exif
  fields and/or dates.

  Fast and efficient operation.

  Dependencies on Cairomm, Exiv2, LibGdamm (SQLite backend), Giomm,
  Glibmm, LibGPhoto2, GNOME Docking Library,
  GraphicsMagick++/ImageMagick++, GtkImageView and Gtkmm.

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Copyright (C) 2009, 2010 Debarshi Ray <rishi@gnu.org>
All rights reserved.

Copying and distribution of this file, with or without modification,
are permitted in any medium without royalty provided the copyright
notice and this notice are preserved.
