[development] image node type

[James Walker]

On 12/9/05 12:29 PM, Jeff Eaton wrote:
>> -----Original Message-----
>> Ah. see in my vision a "file" has "derivatives" ... image this is 
>> thumbnail, alternate sizes, etc. audio - alternate encodings, 
>> bitrates, 
>> etc. (same for video)... and on.
>>
>> Thus the node is the collection... and I'd still recommend we keep 
>> {files} for tracking the various file parts. but the node 
>> would still be 
>> the collection of them. (if that makes sense).
>>
>> I.e. the "node" is the main thing with the title that gets uploaded...
> 
>> anything generated from that is kept and included, but not it's own
> node.
>> -- 
> 
> 
> I like that a lot. A whole lot. The different kinds of derivatives would
> probably differ greatly depending on the type of file. Different
> resolutions for images, different bitrates or cropped 'teasers' for
> audio, different compression formats for various downloads.
> 
> And yes, it does make great sense. I like this option an awful lot.
> 
> How would different KINDS of files be handled/displayed differently,
> though? Image.module does a lot of really nice funky stuff to deal with
> various resolutions. If it became a 'file' node or what not, would there
> be a set of hooks exposed for other modules to customize the handling of
> various mime types, etc?

well, i think this is up for debate... I think, were upload.module were 
to become more of an "attach" module - that did the central hooks for 
attaching other nodes ...

I think it should remain node-type per major mimetype - since there is a 
fair bit of diversion between how each of the files can be / are handled.

> One option I've been curious about is a clean way to programmatically
> access (and restrict access to) file variations. Registered users get
> high-quality MP3s and high-res images, for example.

This definitely should get done... it's along with the whole "private 
files aren't really private" issue as well. Not to mention that 
performance of "private" files is fairly bad (i.e. it would be nice to 
avoid DRUPAL_BOOTSTRAP_FULL to fetch a private image).

yep, lots of fun and exciting room to grow here.

-- 
James Walker :: http://walkah.net/ :: xmpp:walkah at walkah.net