[dev] Horde_Share_Base::listShares()

[Michael Rubinsky]

Quoting Chuck Hagenbuch <chuck at horde.org>:

> One of the lessons for me from the DataTree library was that mixing  
> trees in with storage *and* auth was a nightmare for scaling. I'd  
> rather keep the tree structure out of the Share driver, and  
> potentially even move Ansel to tags instead of explicitly nested  
> galleries...

I'd *really* like to keep the ability to nest galleries. I like to  
explicitly group images together in a gallery tree, and give each  
grouping/sub-gallery a nice caption and description. By using *only*  
tags-as-navigation you lose some of that flexibility. Depending on how  
the user tags their images, this can also get unwieldy. It is not  
uncommon for people to have a fair amount of tags on each image e.g.,  
the lens used, environmental descriptors (fog, rain, clouds), type of  
scene (landscape, portrait), dynamic range... you get the idea. If you  
are talking about making pseudo-galleries out of each tag present on  
each image in that gallery, then you'll end up with potentially  
hundreds (alright, maybe a slight exaggeration) of "sub-galleries"  
under each top-level bucket along with some images that aren't tagged  
at all. You would also likely have many of the same sets of  
subgalleries under each top-level bucket.  This also comes with it's  
own set of performance and usability issues.

Navigation wise, because of the way I like my galleries structured, if  
I'm looking for images from my cousin's 2nd birthday party, I'd have  
to probably navigate to the "Family" bucket (assuming we still have  
top level buckets/galleries), find the "birthday" tag, then find the  
"Jessica" tag - assuming I've managed to tag every single image with  
the proper tags to do this. I'm guessing generating a permalink or  
utilizing a slug for this collection of images wouldn't be pretty  
either. I'd prefer to just dump all the images into a "Jessica's  
Second Birthday Party" gallery in my gallery tree - under the Family  
gallery - and if I want every image in the gallery to be found by a  
certain tag search, I can just tag the gallery instead of having to  
tag all 50 images.

Yeah, I could change my tagging scheme, use what I want as a caption  
as the tag text, or just resign myself to using all top-level  
galleries, but I like structuring my galleries in a certain way,  
without having the application's limitations dictate how I have to  
organize things.

Don't get me wrong, I like the idea of browsing tags as galleries -  
and that is already possible across all galleries in Ansel. I just  
also want to have the flexibility to explicitly create a nested  
gallery structure.

Setting aside my personal preferences, I have found it tricky to deal  
with permissions during tag searches, since the permissions are not  
directly associated with the image, but with the image's gallery. I  
have had to wrestle with this in Ansel while implementing the tag  
browsing. There is no way to filter on permissions during the tag  
search phase or to ascertain permissions on an image returned by that  
tag search without first loading each returned image's gallery. This  
might not be as large an issue if we still have top-level buckets,  
since every image within the bucket would have the same perms, but  
that still comes with it's own set of usability issues/questions...

Eh, just meant to say "Please don't remove nested galleries." I guess  
I got a bit long-winded and carried away. Move along, that is all... :)

--mike