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

[derek]

Hi,

We have this feature down as a nice-to-have and would, given time, write it.  Whether we'll get the time will rely on demand.

I guess there are two sides of this.  The generation of the thumbnail and the display.

The thumbnail could be autogenerated by the server by adding a rule that adds a thumbnail aspect when image content is added or modified.   The behaviour associated with this new aspect will be to convert the content into a thumbnail.

The display of the thumbnail will require a thumbnail view in the client, and will make use of the thumbnail aspect, where present.

That is the high level summary.  On the server, there will have to be some rules and conditions added to detect image mimetypes and image size, etc.  The image conversion functionality is already present in the form of ImageMagick wrappers.  After chatting with Roy, I guess this is about 2 days' work.  Kevin estimates the additional client view to be about 1 day's work.

If you choose to write it, we'll help as much as we can.

Regards
Derek

[thaneshk]

Derek,

On  this regard would the thumbnail that is rendered need to be stored as part of the repository as well.

Have you been able to carry out this funciton. If so could you elobrate more in detail please.

Another question i would like to pose is seems like when you use image magick directly it stores the image in a temporary folder. Does the interface jmagick use this as well.

Thank You

Thanesh

[derek]

Hi,

The ImageMagick conversion does not store the image in a temporary folder.  The conversion makes use of 2 temporary files to do the conversion, but the result is then copied to the final storage location.  The temporary files are cleaned up.

No, we don't have thumbnails, yet.  It is a future task.

It would probably be better to store the thumbnail in the repository.  The thumbnail generation time will inhibit the page rendering too much.  The storage overhead will not be significant.

Regards

[derek]

Hi,

Why not have a go at enabling the JMagick transformer?  Also, see how it deals with VM memory consumption during processing of large images.

There are other image libraries available as well and writing a transformer is pretty simple.  Ideally, try to find an image processor that manipulates streams directly.  This will be the best combination.

Regards

[rgauss]

I know this is an old thread but:

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

[czaveri]

I don't know what's the status of thumbnails as of now. But in case it is pending because of inadequate demand… please add my vote for this feature.  :wink:

[paulhh]

Hi

There is a project in the Forge that uses ImageMagick to place a transform in the repo and link it to the original, and an update to the UI to view it.

We'd like to get something in the core product around thumbnails, it's just a question of when. 

Also, I'm more interested in seeing the ImageJ library interated into Alfresco.

Cheers
Paul.

[czaveri]

Thanks Paul!

This answers my question. 

[richmitc]

I took the thumbnails out of the forge as noted above.  It works!  A couple of things I discovered:

1.  You need to edit the existing browse.jsp for 1.4 versus just dumping this one in.  It apparently changed in the month between the thumbnails release and the 1.4 release.  Just look for "thumb".

2.  Don't make your rule for "All Items" like you might usually do.  The rule doesn't work well on spaces.  In fact, don't even do all content.  I set a rule for mime type JPEG Image which is my usual.  I might add others.

3.  Make sure that your Names have extensions e.g. .jpg.  The thumbnail creation doesn't work without it.

Enjoy and thanks to the provider!