Things I think would be cool:
The ability to search by any of the database fields, as well as comments.
The use of mapstraction to allow the use of any mapping system (not just google) when showing image locations
The ability to overlay GPX files on the map
The first two I am currently trying to implement - unsure about the third :-)
Ah... the only search I have found is the box to the top left of the screen. I was hoping to do searches along the lines of taken between x and y dates, country is z, camera type is y etc. All of this info is stored in the db - is tere al;ready a way of querying it via the web gui?
A GPX file is a track produced by a GPS device. It is generally what would be used to geostamp photos - but can also show the entire route of a trip. It could probably be tied in with point 2 as a plugin...
We did indeed not include all those fields. You can see the ones that are searched on the gallery tab on the options. You could also open a feature request ticket on trac for that.
Thanks for the GPX explanation (I am not a photographer so I personally never use these maps stuff at all..:-)) Yes, best would be to included that with the plugin.
a jpeg can have exif data associated with it, in the same file. This can store all kinds of things, but using a basic digital camera will typically have date, time, camera model, and photo exposure settings. It can also store info on image orientation, latitude, longitude, state, city, etc...
Most cameras do not fill this in automatically, as they have no way of knowing position. But if you geocode your images (by matching the photo timestamp to the timestamps in a log from a GPS device) there are various utilities that let you query city, state, etc based upon latitude and longitude. This is how these fields are generally populated. Of course, there are tools that let you populate the exif headers manually, but for large numbers of photos this can be a pain...