I'm not sure to reply here or on the Wiki, but I think you should take care that everything does not get to complicated. I like Zenphoto because of its clear structure and lack of unused features. I like the idea of tagging, but I also like the clear mapping between the filesystem and the database (as Trisweb already mentioned).
I'm not sure if it is a good idea to also include video and sound support in Zenphoto...

I think what is emerging out of the new design is something that (hopefully) has the following qualities:
-Some new features that have been asked for (tagging, searching, etc.)
-An under-the-covers redesign of the guts, which will not only make adding the new stuff easier, but make the framework extensible so other people can add their own new stuff really easily
-Maintaining the ability to just drop some images in some folders and just have everything just work.

The big discussion it may sound like that last one is going away, but I don't think that has to be the case -- we really should be able to keep that basic functionality just as simple as it is now, and have all the other bells and whistles be as transparent as you want them to be.

I agree with Alex -- mapping the database to the filesystem actually makes more sense to enable features such as tags and searching, and there's no drawback. Browsing the gallery would still look in each folder for all images there.

And Videos and Sounds are just to demonstrate the possibilities of an extensible object model; I myself wouldn't necessarily want them. They could be optional components, or plugins, or integrated to "just work" if people want to use them. I don't see the harm in that. I promise it will not be more complex than what zenphoto currently is; there will just be more under the hood, more possibilities for organization, and even simpler and easier ways to find everything you're looking for in large galleries.

For now though, the focus is on getting 1.1 out, with a redesigned Admin UI that will fully support Subalbums. After that's finished we can move on to redesigning the guts.

Ok, that sounds very good. I was a bit worried that Zenphoto would support all kind of stuff which should not be supported by a photogallery. I think providing the framework is a good thing. If people want to store sound and video's they can probably do that by creating plugins.
But for the short term, I think there are other, more important, things to implement.

I still need to go add a while pile of images from the archive, but my tag-enhanced zenphoto gallery is now online, for the curious:

http://alexwilsonphoto.com/gallery/

It's a bit of an experiment in tag-only image browsing.

There's no album view, just a view of the images that belong to a tag set, and the gallery gives you the option to adjust/change/evolve the current tag set by picking similar images to the one you are viewing. The guts of that all works on some tag stuff added to zp.

Alex, that's looking great! A couple comments -- the navigation could be improved somewhat; I'd like the "Back to tag cloud" button nearer to the top. Also, I'd like to know what tag I'm currently viewing (but maybe you want to keep the 'category' to be defined only by images, that works in a different way). Beautiful photography, too, and well presented :-)

Thanks... You can figure out the tags from the mouseover alt text on each image (for the thumbnails, it's the tags the image will load with, for the main image, it's all the tags for that image). That's partly SEO, but I also didn't want the tags to be too obvious -- I think human nature would be to focus on the tags and not the images. Of course, when you are logged in, the tags show up just under the image and are editable like the description

I haven't made my mind up about the "return to tag cloud" link -- up higher is much more accessible, but would add to the clutter. I kinda like it out of the way, since I'm hoping it means people will explore more instead of just going back to the tag cloud all the time. I'm gonna wait and see if I get more complaints about it before moving it anywhere

I looked for my own implementation of a tagging system into zenphoto but without much luck!

Alex,can you please share with us how you were able to accomplish this, or even if you could share the code?

thanks alot