[ansel] Ansel::listGalleries()

[Heath S. Hendrickson]

Now, I haven't looked at Ansel code in quite a while, I'm afraid to 
say.  I got playing with other gallery packages to see what 
functionality they offered (gallery, coppermine, 4images, exhibit engine).

I like some of the functionality that they offered:

gallery pros:
- cool Java remote upload client in addition to HTTP PUT and XP Publish 
(Java can be as a stand-alone "remote" application or via an applet)
- gallery also has the ability to move not only images, but also entire 
galleries around
- fast operation
- better (IMHO) interface than Ansel (check out 
https://www.outerspaceconsultants.com/gallery and 
https://www.outerspaceconsultants.com/horde/ansel to see what the 
interfaces look like to compare)
- ability to dynamically rebuild thumbnails
- hacks to add the ability to show last X images uploaded to all 
galleries (or just one) and to show X random images

gallery cons:
- the HTML code generated is horrendous, it's all tables with very 
little XHTML/CSS
- it doesn't use a SQL database for storing data
- no integration with horde
- no real security over storing usernames and passwords
- not a very flexible permissions system
- uses external programs for some key functionality (jpegtran and jhead)
- uses image magick for image manipulation (doesn't use GD2)

coppermine pros:
- the ability to set quotas on users
- SQL integration
- fairly flexible permissions system

coppermine cons:
- nasty HTML as well
- no integration with horde
- uses image magick for image manipulation (doesn't use GD2)
- from what I saw, it stored your "encrypted" password in a cookie

Neither has any form of subscription mechanism for galleries (which I 
would have thought would have been more popular, guess I'm just alone in 
that desire).  They both have a lot of active skin work going on to 
customize the look and feel of the interface.  And while I realize that 
it's possible to do with Ansel, I don't think it is to the extent of the 
other two (at least not as easily)

I also like the way that gallery handled reordering, it's a much simpler 
interface (though more time consuming to order an entire gallery at one 
sitting).  It's done on a per-image basis with a simple pull-down to 
select the new position in the gallery.  I also like the flexibility in 
the way they handled moving images between galleries.  You can select 
either a single image or an entire range of images to move.   You can 
even move a sub-gallery to another gallery or to the top level.

Just some considerations if/when those features ever get added to Ansel.

Let me know if you need any help tracking down the issue with the 
ordering of entries for the XP publish interface.  I just did a quick 
workaround where I sorted the returned entries in the XP publish code.  
Not the right answer, but it worked for the time being.

heath


Ben Chavet wrote:

> Yay, finals are over!
>
> Now, I can finally try to figure something out on this.  Has anybody 
> else looked
> at it yet?
>
> --Ben
>
> Quoting "Heath S. Hendrickson" <heath at outerspaceconsultants.com>:
>
>> Does Ansel::listGalleries() return the galleries in some deterministic
>> fashion?  Meaning, are the galleries always returned a defined order
>> (parent1, parent1->child1, parent1->child2, parent1->child2->child3,
>> parent2, parent3, parent3->child1).  I'm asking because I'm still having
>> a problem with listing of galleries in the XPPublish function.  It lists
>> all the galleries, but the order is all messed up (a child of one parent
>> coming after another parent, etc.).  It doesn't seem to be in any sorted
>> fashion for the parents, either.
>>