f-spot status in ubuntu dapper

Hello everybody,

I finally decided to take the time to manage my pictures properly, and,
as I'm starting to use ubuntu dapper, f-spot seems to be the software I
need.

However, as there is no documentation with it (f-spot 0.1.11 in ubuntu
dapper), I can can only refer to the website one, and I don't know what
is available in 0.1.11 and what is 0.2.2-only.
I have a few questions about that:

1. are the metadata located in the picture ? I checked the "Write
metadata in the picture" box, but when I rename any picture from ~/Photo
and import it again, f-spot looses its tags and comment. Thus I think I
missed something.

1bis. If the metadata are not yet stored in the picture with XMP, it
seems to be upcoming, can I tag my old picture now and put the tags on
XMP later ?

2. on the website (http://f-spot.org/Terminology), I read about an
"Album". Is it available somewhere, or is it upcoming ?

3. I have some pictures with no exif tag for the date, how can I manually
set up the date in f-spot

3bis. Is there support for inaccurate date ? as april 2005 but with no day ?


I have 5 GB of old pictures to import, with many duplicates (backups of
backups...), I intend to
1. track the duplicates with gqview
2. (maybe) rename all the picture with some script from exif date/time data
3. import in f-spot and tag

Is there a better way to do that ?


Finally, some (short term) feedback:

 * tagging with hierarchic tags is great, but I expected more
sophisticated search filters to really make use of it (eg: search all
people that are not Nina nor Robert, etc.)
 * In the "thumbnail mode", viewing tags with icons is great, viewing
comments would be useful too,
 * versioning is great.
 

That's all, many thanks for any help and for this software !