[development] Unified image/video management module

[Fabio Varesano]

Hi Vernon,

This is definitely a good news.

I think that the best approach is provide a good update script which
is able to convert old Acidfree modules to image/video nodes.

If you have some questions about my video module just ask.

Fabio


Vernon Mauery wrote:
> Hi, as the author of Acidfree, I have gotten lots of praise for creating an 
> image/video system that is easy for people to use.  Granted at first it was 
> not perfect, but it has made great advances and gained quite a following in 
> the year.  But I have also gotten a lot of flak from people saying that it 
> wasn't done in the true spirit of Drupal.  The praise came from users, the 
> flak came from developers.
> 
> Now that I have worked with the Drupal community for a year, I have realized 
> that my approach was *not* fully in spirit with Drupal.  Really, I probably 
> should have stuck my head in a cold bucket and listened to Gerhard, Boris, 
> and Dries and tried to work with other module authors.  Acidfree is an 
> awesome application -- it is simple to use (very usable UI), easy to theme, 
> and has an appropriate feature set.  But it still bugs me that I didn't quite 
> do it right. So here is my first stab at repentance.
> 
> But I have a question.  I think I can do now what I should have done a year 
> ago (but was unable to because of pride and lacking APIs).  I have made a 
> list of things that Acidfree does for me and have found that I can accomplish 
> nearly all of the things I want to with new advances in APIs and a study of 
> other modules that are available.  I think by using Image, Video, Taxonomy, 
> Views, and use of the form API, I could turn Acidfree into a management 
> module and let the other node module take care of themselves.  I guess the 
> question is: should make a new module or just change Acidfree (by providing 
> an upgrade path)?  If I do this, I don't really want to have to manage 
> Acidfree and this new module, plus, I really think the name is great.  My 
> opinion is that I should release a 4.8 version of Acidfree that defines 0 
> node types and simply works with the appropriate node types to offer a 
> unified management interface.  But I worry about all the users I have 
> attracted.  Maybe I should target 4.9 (or whatever 2 releases from now is) 
> and say that Acidfree will be obsolete in that release and create a new 
> module called something else.  But I don't really want to pollute the module 
> space.
> 
> I remember a while back that the fact that Drupal does not really have a 
> unified way of dealing with multimedia was a big deal.  Are people still 
> interested in this?  Or should I just crawl back in my cave and continue 
> plugging away at Acidfree?
> 
> --Vernon
>