wish list (thumbnail viewing)

[hololi]

Hi all
I am evaluating alfresco for use as a document repository and I must say I like what I see.

I am trying to get away from the file server "rubbish bin" method of storing documents but do not want to go with sharepoint/knowledgeTree etc.. as my specific needs are the storage of images. (repository management more so than content management)

The check in/out and versioning meets 70% of my needs out of the box but my users are in a very hetrogenous environment (linux, solaris, mac, wintel etc..etc..) and everybody has an opinion on what to use as a repository (I'll never get mac users to even understand cvs   and if I can rip out samba and a windows fileserver that would be great).

To cut a long story sort as I am storing images what would I need to do to get "thumbnail" viewing ability of images?
a) write the java myself
b) beg for this feature

I have done web app (struts) development (but not JSF) before but does anybody have guidence on how I should start this work?

Does anybody else need thumbnail ability ?

regards…
Hololi

[richmitc]

Everything was going along fine.  Then I noticed that workflow was broken.  Whenever I would try to do it, I would get a "Cannot get value for expression (#r.path}' error when I went to the second step in the wizard.

I like (and appreciate the original work on) the thumbnails so that Iwent about to debug it.  I checked out the thumbnails code and the 1.4 code from port 3696.  I worked to incorporate the 1.4 changes into the thumbnails code and rebuild.  Still no joy.  Then I found a post (which I can't seem to find again, sorry) that said faces needed to get all beans from one jar.  I proceeded to make the thumbnail changes in the repository and web-client projects and rebuild the repository.jar and web-client.jar.  I also made the other related changes e.g. no more faces-config-custom.xml.  That worked!  Now I can setup a workflow.  (I am still working to get Group Review to work, but that is a separate subject.)

The question is what do I do with this now?  If I am right about the above, the thumbnail changes, at least the bean ones, cannot be in a separate alfresco-thumbnails jar.  I don't see how I can check these changes into the Thumbnails project (and don't know how).  Also, I am reticent to check them in to the HEAD stream (don't know how there either).  If others want to benefit from this in ways other than this post, I would like to help.  Please let me know how.

[rgauss]

We haven't updated the thumbnails forge project for 1.4 beacuse we are going to be changing the structure of the model and how things work a bit at the same time.

We finally have some time again to dedicate to it though and hope to have a new release in the next week or two.

[richmitc]

Wonderful!  It is great stuff!  Thank you!  As I said, I would be happy to share the changes I made.  Based on the errors I was getting, I believed I needed to put the BrowseBean in the same jar as the rest of the beans to get workflow to operate.  Anyway, if you are looking for a tester…

[rgauss]

Thanks to richmitc's testing help, the new thumbnails extension is available:

http://forge.alfresco.com/projects/thumbnails/

The new extension is compatible with Alfresco 1.4 and has undergone several changes including the use of a public service.

Please see the readme for full details.