On 18-Apr-05, at 10:29 AM, Robert Douglass wrote:
I love the new image modue. Is there any reason why it is adventageous to have images be nodes, and if so why don't we extend this to all of the files that we upload?
yes - in fact the maintaining of "images as nodes" (but separating it from the image manipulation stuff) was very deliberate... as Boris has already mentioned - there is lots of stuff you get "for free" by having images as nodes - and it is really intended for "image as primary content"- type scenarios - i.e. photo / screenshot galleries, "photo blog", etc...
A proposal: from my casual and not exhaustive reading of the image module code, it seems like the coupling to the node table is only very superficial. It would therefore be possible to extend the image module to respond to any images which come in as attachments via the upload module and process them in the same way that the image files attached to image nodes are processed. The two major changes which would need to be done to enable this are:
1) accept the file_api patch[1] which is in the queue and has a relatively strong amount of support
i'm amongst the supporters of this.
2) rewrite the image module queries which select on node.type='image' to files.filemime in (image/gif, image/png, image/jpeg).
well - here's where stuff gets tricky - image.module currently does a bunch of stuff that may or may not make sense in a global context : i.e. generating a bunch of "derivative" sizes - i might not want this if i'm just attaching, say, a screenshot of a bug on a project issue... etc etc.
The advantages of doing this would be a more logical workflow, the end of images coming into the system but not being recognized as such, one fewer content types that users need to deal with and better support of mass uploading.
The last point merits a little more attention as that is actually my impetus for bringing this up. I'm working on ways to upload multiple files from one screen, either via multiple upload forms or by uploading a .zip file which gets unpacked. While this should be relatively straightforward for attachments, for images it is hairier as the concept of an image node only accomodates 1 image.
If you haven't met already - I'd invite Scott Courtney to step forward at this point - please check out the good work he's been doing on "image_import" module ... which does this kind of stuff.
Welcoming thoughts and comments! Any advantages or disadvantages that I haven't thought of? Any technical problems that I haven't forseen?
just that people don't always want want images treated the same in all instances... that's the biggest stumbling block afaict. I think it makes sense to centralize where possible (as I've tried to get us started on)... but not everywhere, 'cause then we can't keep everybody happy ;) j -- James Walker :: http://www.walkah.net/