To enable editing an album by several users (maybe even simultaneously and on different computers) fotoalbum needs to know about different users. To distinguish them, it uses the user and computer name it gets from the operating system. However, this pair of user and host is not directly used. The user has to map every new pair of user and host to an alphabetic character ID (when newly creating an album, the current user is automatically assigned the ID 'a'). By doing so, you get the possibility of appearing as one user although you are editing the album on different computers, for example.
fotoalbum stores ratings made by every user separately, see here.
Use a distributed version control system like mercurial (hg) or git. The internal structure of an album file makes it possible to merge changes made by different users.
In case you always have access to a server, a centralized VCS can also be used, but usually means more administrative work.todo: describe how to do it.
- The simplest case: one or more users sharing one PC or other usage patterns which make sure that the album file is never edited by more than one instance of fotoalbum at the same time. You can store the album file in any place you like and there is no need to treat it in any special way. You can use more than one user ID if you like.
- The album file is (or might be) edited by more than one instance of fotoalbum at the same time (usually more than one user and more than one PC is involved). You have to make sure that concurrent editing never happens with the same user ID. You need to use a version control system or other means of merging edits made by different users.
todo