Aug 23, 2002, 9:34 AM
Veteran / Moderator (6956 posts)
Aug 23, 2002, 9:34 AM
Post #11 of 11
Views: 4159
Hi,
Feel free to offer yours :) My comments are not about that... After all, my script was based on HamCards when Lee finally gave up and said his SQL version was never going to see the light of day, I made my own. He got really deep into HamWeather -- which is an awesome program -- truly major league. (Lee is who put me on to GT with Links 2.0 in the first place.)
We are just similar, but still different, as what I'm doing is *not* sending images, but only references to images. Also, I serve images statically, not via the jump.cgi script. Etc. This is how we work differently, internally.
I've got auto-thumbnailing routines working with netpbm as the conversion set. It requires a few (4 or 5) of the filters from netpbm, then the jpeg groups routines, and if you've got it, GD.pm 1.19 for GIF. Pretty much, though, everything is JPG through my thumbnail routines, since GIF is only really good for clip-art or line art.
Drop shadows and rotations only work on Unix, since they are (were?) shell scripts. I know that the authors of netpbm had been wanting to change the shell scripts to a portable format, but I'm not sure how far they've gone with it.
I've been playing with yogi's routines for uploads/attachments, and he's definitely on the right track ;)
His program is almost ready for prime time as a basic attachments system, different from my logo/graphic upload routines (putting a logo on a link), and what I have planned for the major Image/Gallery mod, which is really something which has gotten way out of hand <sigh>.
It's amazing how people can be working to the same (or similar) ends and still be so completely different in their end products.
Ian and I have been talking about him taking over parts of my existing routines and scripts, and maybe Yogi will be interested in working on a cooperative effort where I can put my image manipulation routines into his attachment sytem. It's a bit more complicated than that, since my routines were geared for displaying images, and treated non-image attachments specially. Yogis is more like for non-image attachments, and treats images specially, which is much more different than it might superficially appear.
Many people have mentioned Image Folio, and I found some old messages (and only parts of my script) where I had Links 1.13 cloned into doing an Image Folio display, with slides or thumbnails, and several easily modified templates for showing the thumbnail pages off -- (35mm slide format, vertical format, TGP format, etc).
Image Folio is based on many windows display programs, but works on the web. I haven't looked at it in a year (I bought it back in Jan 2001), so I don't know how far they have come, but at the time, it was one of the better ones, but still no where near good enough for Links SQL users ;) who demand the ultimate in features and flexibility, and an SQL back end :)
Basically, my time is extremly limited, but my needs have grown. If I can find people who want to cooperate in development, I have the ideas, the plans, and many fragments of working or partially working modules, I just can never find the time to put them all together and keep up with the changes in Links. There is a *lot* of grunt work that has to go into plugins, and programs, such as error handling, exception checking, install code, etc, and that is not a lot of "fun" and it's not glamourous, but it's necessary and time consuming. Figuring out the "tricks" is more fun, but making them work is again, grunt work.
I need to get this Image/Gallery thing working by December, since I have some deadlines with backers (who were killed in the current market). In addition, I need to get the shopping cart system with on-line order processing working. Aki is working on the shopping cart, I'm hacking a front end to let me add items in onto links (similar to images in a gallery, or postcards program) and I'm trying to keep it all in one direction and one set of reusable codes.
In other words, we need to have a successful holiday season.
Basically what I'm working towards:
1) upload images, files, etc and have good control over who sees them, and how
2) be able to attach multiple files to links, create image galleries, collections and series.
3) be able to provide rights, privs, rewards, access to USERS and ARTISTS/CONTRIBUTORS in an infinite array
4) control who can access the files, and how, and CHARGE for it
5) automate as much of the process as possible, using an amzing number of config options.
Pretty much, this has come down to coding. Most of the initial logic has been worked out, and was working, but it has to be re-done, and upgraded to the new links and to a portable modular system.
PUGDOG� Enterprises, Inc.
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, The users submit the image as a url then the globals recognize it as an image then display it... 
