Request: Copying photos to multiple albums; movie thumbnails

I just started using Gallery (v1.3.5-cvs-b102) and it's just what I was looking for. It is packed with useful features. However there's always room for more.

I would like to have the ability to a photo in multiple albums (e.g. depending on themes), without incurring a penalty of storing multiple copies on the disk. I use Linux, so one way would be to simply have links (either hard or symbolic). But I would like the library to be aware of the links. Most of the photo properties should be shared (i.e., owner, size, rotation), but permissions would still be specific to each album (i.e., the owner could remove it from his album, but not from mine). There may need to be a permission to copy/link the picture.

Right now I use 'add photos' with a URL of the picture in one album to create the photo in another album, however distinct copies of the photo reside on my disk. Some of the photos are over 1MB in size, so I would like to optimize the use of disk space.

Another request [don't you hate it when people combine unrelated requests like this] would be to associate a photo with a movie (i.e., to have a more relevant movie thumbnail).

A more general feature would be to create an album that for administrators would be just a plain old album, but for regular users, it would be a movie or photo depending on their settings. For example, I might generate a movie in MPEG-4 and Quicktime formats as well as a photo to use as a thumbnail. I would store all these in such an album. When some user wants to see the movie, then the album would act as an MPEG-4 or Quicktime movie depending on their preferences, without them having to go into the album and having to choose the specific format that applies to them. For people that couldn't play the movie, it would just be a photo.