Re: GQview 2.0.2 and 2.1.2 released.

Greg Troxel wrote:
>   I am unable to find anything that might cause a longer startup
>   time. Going through a diff between the two releases, if you are using
[...]
> gqview is normally so speedy that I noticed.  It turned out to be yet
> another fontconfig cache file lossage problem, and I rebuilt

Glad it wasn't my fault, and sorry you had to deal with the problem at all.

[... About the pan view and choice of GQview thumbnailers ...]
>   The problem is the design of the original GQview thumbnail caching
>   mechanism, it will always regenerate a cached thumbnail when it does
>   not match the requested size. The 'shared thumbnail' design always
>   uses 128x128 and 256x256 thumbnails on disk, and scales down
>   internally when needed (plus both the large and small size can
>   coexist).
> 
>   The pan view needs to be able to easily switch between a variety of
>   thumbnail sizes. To avoid constant regeneration of the 'classic
>   thumbnail' cache it will not use it.
> 
> OK.  Perhaps this should be clarified somehow, but I'm not sure where.
> It seems there are really only two mechanisms, the freedesktop.org
> shared cache, and the gqview mechanism.  The gqview mechanism can
> either use .thumbnails or e.g.
> ~/.gqview/thumbnails/full/path/to/image-basename.jpg.png but it's the
> same file format and sizeissues.  Is that right?

This is correct, there are two thumbnailers built into GQview:

  1) 'classic' The original thumbnailer, recreates the cache _whenever_ the 
requested thumbnail size does not match the one on disk. In normal 
operation can be set to store thumbnails 'local'.

  2) 'shared' The freedesktop.org thumbnailer, only recreates the cache 
when a timestamp changes, supports two sizes on disk (concurrently), 
internally resizes if requested size is not one of the two on disk. _Can_ 
be told to store thumbnails 'local', but only specifically and not in 
normal operation (keep reading for details on this).

> Then, the other question is reading thumbs.  I currently like having
> thumbs in .thumbnails because I make them on one machine and then
> rsync my images.
> 
>   > Perhaps a reasonable solution would be to have an option to decline to
>   > store thumbs in ~/.thumbails or ~/.gqview/.thumbnails for images on a
>   > different filesystem, falling back to .thumbnails in the image
>   > directory in that case.
> 
>   As stated above the pan view's issue is not where the thumbnail cache
>   file is stored, but the poor design of the classic caching mechanism
>   when the requested thumbnail size changes often.
> 
> Sure -- what I meant by bring that up was that currently I entire
> disable shared caching because it violates my security policy when it
> does cross-fs caching.  If there were an option to only put things in
> the shared cache if they were on the same filsystem, then I could
> enable it and the pan view would work reasonably on most images.

The freedesktop.org thumbnailer in GQview (#2 'shared' above) is complete 
as far as the ~/.thumbnails folder is concerned. But the local thumbnailing 
portion is only partly correct - what is there uses the wrong folder name 
(*see link below) and perhaps even the wrong string for the md5sum. It 
works but is not within the specification as to the folder/file names used 
on the disk.

It does follow the specification in that to store thumbnails local you must 
specifically perform the action. In GQview this action is to open the 
'thumbnail maintenance' utility and run 'create thumbnails' with 'store 
thumbnails local...' enabled in that dialog. The thumbnailer selected in 
preferences will be used ('classic' or 'shared').

  * as defined in the spec here:
    http://jens.triq.net/thumbnail-spec/local.html

> (In my view the freedesktop.org spec is flawed from a security view
> and should be changed to allow in-fs caching.  But I'm not trying to
> push that here.)

I eventually will fix the local thumbnail option for the freedesktop.org 
thumbnailer to be within spec. Your concern for the normal operation to 
create thumbnails in the shared folder when no local thumbnail exists or is 
no longer valid is one I understand - but if your home folder is properly 
permissioned, in theory it should not be an issue. 'Shared' is referring to 
common between applications, not between users.

Greetings,
John

-- 
John Ellis <[email protected]>

http://gqview.sourceforge.net <GQview> | http://hideseek.sourceforge.net
http://gqmpeg.sourceforge.net <GQmpeg> |     <Preferences Hide and Seek>


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