[dev] Ansel / Horde_Image_Effect and image format choice.

[Chuck Hagenbuch]

Quoting Michael Rubinsky <mike at theupstairsroom.com>:

> With all the image effect stuff we've been talking about for adding   
> "pretty" thumbnails to Ansel, etc... It dawned on me that most of  
> what  we are trying to do will really only work if using png as the  
> image  format.  Without the transparent background, the jpg images  
> would look  horrible.

In that case they're going to suffer in IE6 also, right?

> I suppose we will have to check for the configured image format and   
> either use the 'new' stuff, or fall back to what we currently do.   
> The  only issue is for existing installations that might for  
> whatever  reason have switched from one to the other and thus have a  
> mix of  formats already generated. I guess for those, we could  
> provide a  script to scrub the vfs of horde-generated images?

I've thought for a while that it might make sense in Jonah to allow  
the gallery to control some or all of the theme settings, instead of  
it being a straight Horde theme picked by the user who is viewing the  
pictures.

If we do that - and I'm not saying it's a trivial step from where we  
are - then we could allow users to pick thumbnail styles for their  
galleries, which might be desirable. We could also have the background  
color specified in the settings, which would hopefully allow nicer  
JPGs to be generated.

I think having an ansel-admin script with a few common options, like  
clear-thumbnails, clear-screen (probably either gloabal or  
gallery-specific), etc. would be both reasonable and useful in general.

-chuck