Topic: NetPBM Support

[LoonyPandora]

Hi there,

is there any plans to support this image manipulation package? like Gallery? - it uses a trimmed down version that anyone can install on their system (don't have to own it, install anything, or be root - just upload a few files) - and it works a treat.

Lack of support for this is the only reason why I don't use Album.pl now... I don't have ImageMagick you see... I love the integration with YaBB, but it's nothign without auto-created thumbnails  

so much so, I fiddled about with Gallery, and got it to work somewhat with my YaBB Member database.. but it is FAR too much hassle, and most of it doesn't work... I would dearly love it if Album.pl could support this.

Thanking you for your time

[Dino]

Album.pl is written in Perl, and it's a one-man show: Mike Bobbit.

Gallery is written in PHP, and it looks like there's at least twelve developers and programmers that contribute to its development.

Personally, I feel that album.pl is supported extremely well. There's nothing like getting support right from the horse's mouth. Mike doesn't have a flashy website like Gallery's because he's spending most of his time helping people (via the forums), adding user-requested features (via the forums), and tweaking his code.

As far as Imagemagick, most ISP's will install it if requested. Many already have it loaded.

Installation of album.pl is one of the easiest things to do: you upload a few files, modify some permissions, and point your photo directory to it. It's a snap. You can have an online photo gallery operational in a few mintues, literally. You don't even NEED ImageMagick or any other programs to be operational.

Gallery looks like it would take me a week to just get it going. Furthermore, you MUST have ImageMagick or Net PBM installed on your server in order for it to work.

However, thanks for pointing out Gallery. I'm always looking at playing with different apps. I'm sure Mike will be interested in checking it out too.  

[LoonyPandora]

Oh, don't get me wrong, I do appreciate this script, and I have used it in the past - and yeah, it is simple to use. - and yeah, I realise only one person is working on it. - not complaining or anything (if it came accross like that I apologise) - just suggesting impovements

I just really need thumbnail generation, and NetPBM is simple. I'm having a go myself at writing a gallery script for YaBB over at boardmod (well, the thumbnail part anyway...) - but I thought I would ask over here, if it could be put on the to-do list maybe. as this is the better script overall.

For me, ImageMagick is a no go, I've pushed my ISP to install it, and they wont, which is why I'm with gallery, struggling along, trying to make it work with YaBB (and failing somewhat)

I just pointed out how gallery has this really easy way to auto generate thumbnails - thought it might be of interest - because I sure would love it in album.pl

[Mike Bobbitt]

Thanks for the stalwart defence, Dino!

As for NetPBM, I admit total ignorance, but I'll review it and see if I can add it to the script. If it's an ImageMagick replacement, that would be handy: not everyone can have ImageMagick. (Hopefully NetPBM is more ubiquitous).

Anyway, thanks for the info, I'll check it out and add it to the to do list.

Cheers

[Mike Bobbitt]

Hey Looney,

I've installed NetPBM now. Looks like you need to be root to install it, though maybe pre-compiled images are different. If that's the case, it's not much better than IM.

At any rate, I've had a quick scan through, and can't find a way to resize a regular image. I thought pnmscale would do, but it only works with pbm files.

Any chance you know the prog/syntax for scaling gif/jpeg etc? It'd save me a lot of time...

Cheers

[LoonyPandora]

I not slating you Mike, I appreciate your work, as I say, I used to us album.pl. anyways...

Yeah, I should have mentioned, Gallery comes with a small bit of NetPBM that you don't have to be root to install - the full package, as I understand, you do need to be root.

have a look at the Gallery Requirements page - it does a good job of explaining what it does.

Unfortunately, I don't know the syntax. - I've tried decyphering - but failed miserably.

Keep up the good work, I've been album.pl for a while, it's just now I've decided that it might be a good idea to mention NetPBM - as no-one seems to have heard of if

cheers

PS: - does this page help with the syntax for resizing? - it's an example script, and it looks like it changes the image to PBM format, resizes, and then converts it back to JPEG/GIF/Whatever - so hope it helps

[Mike Bobbitt]

Thanks, that does help. It's PHP, but should be easy to convert into Perl. The bigger problem is that it looks like Gallery comes with a NetPBM PHP module, which won't help album.pl since it's Perl based.

At any rate, I'll see what I can come up with...

Thanks for the info. And don't worry, I didn't see you as slamming album.pl, suggestions are what this forum is all about.

It's not like I make money if people use album.pl over gallery.

Cheers

[Dino]

Thanks for the stalwart defence, Dino!

I like the word, "stalwart". I have never used it in a sentence.

LoonyPandora, I know your intentions weren't to critique Mike's efforts. I just wanted to let you and others know that many of us cherish Mike's script, and especially his dedication. I personally know the hardships of dedicating time outside of family. It's a sacrifice, and Mike has made many of them.

Perhaps one day Mike will have a team of developers working out the code. For now, I kinda like that it's a one-man-show.

Loony, thanks for bringing Gallery, and especially NetPBM to our attention. I'm always curious at trying out new apps.

[fresont]

Hi,

moveabletype uses netpbm to resize images, so that may have some good code to look at to jumpstart using netpbm.

I've been looking for an album that uses netpbm instead of imageMagick for a while now.  If album.pl does it, you would be my hero!

Thanks!

[Mike Bobbitt]

Thanks for the info, that'll help a lot! Still not sure how/when it'll happen, but more info helps make it all clearer...

Cheers

[Juan]

I found this:

This is the Gallery binary micro distribution of the NetPBM graphics package.
Both of these products are released under the Gnu Public License and source
code for each can be found at:

Gallery home page:   http://gallery.sourceforge.net
NetPBM home page:   http://netpbm.sourceforge.net

This particular set of binaries is a subset of the NetPBM binary distribution
was compiled by Pierre Humblet.  You can get the full distribution from here:
ftp://ftp.franken.de/pub/win32/develop/gnuwin32/cygwin/porters/Humblet_Pierre_A

INSTALLING
----------

1. Unpack the binaries into any directory.
2. Add the netpbm directory to your path
   OR
   Copy the DLL files from the netpbm directory into any directory
   that is in your path (such as \windows\system32)

Win32:

http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/gallery/netpbm1.1-gallery1.0-win32.tgz?download

All_os:

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=7130&package_id=14464

[Mike Bobbitt]

Thanks Juan. I've got NetPBM installed on a test system, just no time to test against it yet.

[frister]

BTW, if you can live with the slowdown in the loading process, and thumbnail views that are square (meaning a bit distorted), then you need neither ImageMagick, nor NetPBM, nor the perl GD module.

From my rather slow server, it takes less than 1 second per image to display an album page with none of those graphics modules available.

With ImageMagick enabled, it takes half a second per image.

J.J. Frister