Re: thumbnails vs scaled images

[Please cc any responses to me.]

John Ellis wrote:
 > Per Bothner wrote:
 >> The former problem can be partially solved by moving scaled images
 >> to subdirectories, but it would be nice if gqview would know that
 >> the scaled images are just that.

 > How? All image files are the same to GQview just like all files are
 > the same to the ls command. GQview will only ignore them if they are:

 >  a) someplace else
 >    (subfolder, best design IMHO)

I suspect so too.  But what I was thinking was whether it might be
useful to agree on a convention that a program like GQview would know about.

Assume we use a convention with subdirectories named .scaledNNN.
For an image file NAME.jpg we'd have the convention that (say)
.scaled240/NAME.jpg is a copy of NAME.jpg scaled to fit in 240x240,
and in general .scaledNNN/NAME.jpg is NAME.jpg scaled to fit in NNNxNNN.

How might GQview help in such a situation?
- If NAME.jpg moved, renamed, or deleted, then .scaled*/NAME.jpg should
also be moved, renamed, or deleted.
- If NAME.jpg is otherwise modified, .scaled*/NAME.jpg should be
regenerated or at least removed.
- An option so that GQview stores its thumbnails in a suitable .scaled
sub-directory.  Perhaps this would be only if .scaledNNN already exists,
or there might be an option to create .scaledNNN in the preferred
thumbnail size if it doesn't exist.
- Appropriate suppression of .scaledNNN directories in the tree view.

I don't know how portable/robust having directories and URLs starting
with a dot would be.  It appears they're allowed in URLs.  However,
I don't know how well they work on variou fire-systems, such as vfat,
or on cd-roms.  In that case some other naming convention might be
better.

 > b) do not have an extension that GQview recognizes
 >     (impractical)

I agree.

 > c) a hidden file, and hidden files are disabled in GQview
 >     (probably not very practical for a web album)

Maybe.  It's the same issue as whether the name of the "scaled"
sub-directories should start with a dot: it's a question of portability
wrt web servers, file systems, and browsers.

 > d) still visible, but listed last or grouped with a common prefix
 >   (the thumbnail filename starts with a zz or something, and this does
 > not avoid creating thumbnails of your scaled images when GQview 
enters > the folder).

It does - if we're using a convention that GQview knows about.

 > Depends on what you want to be able to do from within GQview. It can
 > already do the basics: view images and run shell scripts on them.
 > Please be specific in the tasks you feel GQview is lacking.

I'm not saying GQview is lacking anything.  I'm asking how to make it
easier to browse and work with static web photo albums, where by
"static" I static html and .jpg files which can be browsed using
file: URLs or stored on a read-only file-system.  I don't know how
people want to do that - but the number of scripts that people have
written for this task suggests it's not that uncommon.
-- 
	--Per Bothner
[email protected]   http://per.bothner.com/


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