I am afraid that this is not an actionable bug report. It looks more like a hand wavy wish list, which is not what a bug tracker is for. I would suggest filing separate bugs with a clear and limited scope.

Detailed explanation follows...

(In reply to Luya Tshimbalanga from comment #0)
> Following the suggestions on Fedora Desktop mailing list[1], I filed this
> report to request a improvement for Gnome Photos as replacement to Shotwell,
> a year and half unmaintained applications developed by the now defunct
> upstream Yorba still used as default by major distributions i.e Fedora in my
> case. Gthumb was proposed as one of default applications but the lack of
> proper non-destructive edit is a concern.

Please note that gnome-photos does not aim to retain strict feature compatibility with $FOO. That is not a goal, and is one of the reasons why we went for a separate application instead of modifying $FOO into GNOME Photos.

A separate application gives us more elbow room to experiment with the UX without breaking the workflow of existing users, which is not the case when you modify a pre-existing application.

It is simply impossible to design a new user experience from the ground up, if you have the "we must maintain strict feature compatibility with $FOO" guillotine hanging over your head.

Those who really want the UX and feature set offered by Shotwell, should just use Shotwell, and hopefully step up to maintain it. Similarly those who prefer GThumb, or Darktable or GIMP or whatever, should just use those. We do want to make it easy to open those applications from gnome-photos, and you can just as easily install them using gnome-software. These are just applications, after all.

That said, gnome-photos is still new and evolving. We have some plans on how to make it more useful, and we are open to feedback. You are welcome to go through the design page [1], join #gnome-design and #photos on GIMPNet for a chat. It would be even better if you help us implement some of the things.

Just keep in mind that it might not retain exact pixel-by-pixel feature compatibility with other applications.

> One of them is the support of plugins featuring the ability to sort pictures
> by dates i.e yyyy/mm/dd which facilitates the archiving method.

Yes, there are plans to implement better grouping/searching. eg., see:
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/gnome-design-team/gnome-mockups/master/photos/wires-photos-recent.png

> The current
> release version of Gnome Photos (3.18) failed to read all files with
> Pictures folder.

You mean images inside ~/Pictures are not showing up? What is your XDG_PICTURES_DIR pointing to? This sounds like a bug.

> Additionally, it will be nice to sort videos recorded by
> devices like smartphones or camera on Videos folder which same yyyy/mm/dd
> format by default where Photos can read them and suggest opening an external
> application for further edit.

Videos? Why would we show videos in gnome-photos?

[1] https://wiki.gnome.org/Design/Apps/Photos

Hi Debarshi
> Please note that gnome-photos does not aim to retain strict feature
> compatibility with $FOO. That is not a goal, and is one of the reasons why
> we went for a separate application instead of modifying $FOO into GNOME
> Photos.

Note the goal is not necessary being compatible with $FOO but to see where $BAR can do better in efficient way.

> A separate application gives us more elbow room to experiment with the UX
> without breaking the workflow of existing users, which is not the case when
> you modify a pre-existing application.

Sorry for not being clear in that context. My example of Shotwell show how it handle importing photos sorted by YYYY/MM/YY. I tried the current release of Gnome Photos 3.18 which lack viewing pictures sorted by date, the indexing process is slow with no sign of status progress. Note that I haven't tried the git version.

> Those who really want the UX and feature set offered by Shotwell, should
> just use Shotwell, and hopefully step up to maintain it. Similarly those who
> prefer GThumb, or Darktable or GIMP or whatever, should just use those. We
> do want to make it easy to open those applications from gnome-photos, and
> you can just as easily install them using gnome-software. These are just
> applications, after all.
Shotwell is not that much different as pictures sorter and non-destructive basic editor. I learned Gnome Photos will implements both. I only ask if there will be an equivalent from Shotwell which you partially answered by posting the image on comment #1 inspired by Google Photos. Darktable and Gimp are advanced editors which is where Photos will display Open with $FOO using your example.

> That said, gnome-photos is still new and evolving. We have some plans on how
> to make it more useful, and we are open to feedback. You are welcome to go
> through the design page [1], join #gnome-design and #photos on GIMPNet for a
> chat. It would be even better if you help us implement some of the things.

Thank you for the info.

> Just keep in mind that it might not retain exact pixel-by-pixel feature
> compatibility with other applications.

Only ability to sort imported pictures by time and non-destructive editing matter. I treat Shotwell more are an quick organizer.


> You mean images inside ~/Pictures are not showing up? What is your
> XDG_PICTURES_DIR pointing to? This sounds like a bug.
Yes, inside ~/Pictures. I just noticed Photos is still indexing when scrolling down with lack of displayed time. Putting in the position of casual user, I will be easily confused without any progress bar showing the status.

> > Additionally, it will be nice to sort videos recorded by
> > devices like smartphones or camera on Videos folder which same yyyy/mm/dd
> > format by default where Photos can read them and suggest opening an external
> > application for further edit.
> 
> Videos? Why would we show videos in gnome-photos?
In the sense that should Photos detect a video file from the device, suggest relocating to Video folder.