HI Bharat,
I have spent the last few weeks looking around the web and at different "commercial" applications that provide image galleries. I work for a local council (Libraries and Arts section) were we have a need to catalog around 150,000 images for the local history and archives departments. Having just left University and not worked for councils before I do not have the mind set against Open Source Software. Having been through our requirements, checked the budget allowance then laughed at the stupid amounts of money people are expecting to be paid for poor software I have found your application tops the lot!! I have installed the latest [stable] version of Gallery (1.1.3) and I am very impressed - not only by the functionality but the overall standard of coding etc. Top marks straight away....
Now onto the nitty gritty ;o) - i am planning to use the newest version (G2) when it becomes available, because of the scalability (and portability) that a database will allow (also allows a lot of stats to be collected - which Governments love!). What i would like to know - have you any plans to utilise any common format for cataloging the items contained within any gallery - such as MARC or Dublin Core? I say this because I have grander plans to connect the gallery of images to our Library Management System - I can do this via Z39.50 (or some other method though I haven't spent too long looking just yet) and this common format would make everything that little bit easier :eek
You may ask "why should I bother using a format such as MARC or Dublin Core?" - but the inter-operability that adherence to such a standard, would make your product a clear winner in a large market. Having looked at a lot of applications - your product provides nearly everything the others do, but without the huge demand for cash. Now i am not writing this to win over your support so i can get your product for free - I believe in paying where it is worth it, and if we do take this project on board then I will make sure a hefty donation is paid to the creator.
In the UK we have many issues surrounding information and the way it is delivered to the public - your use of localization etc for languages just helps that little bit more towards our social inclusion agendas. In the end it all adds up to a perfect match - our requirements and your application. I understand that G2 will be modular in design, but it is the underlying database structure that is important - I am sure that when if it comes to the crunch i could hack some method of capturing the info, but your programming experience and knowledge of Gallery is more extensive than mine! So anything i do will pail in comparison to yours :smile: (is that enough flowers!)
Enough talking - just thanks for what you have done so far - and looking forward to the next installment!
May Open Source Rule the World!
Adam
Posted: Sun, 2003-02-02 16:23
Posts: 7994
I've never heard of either of those so the answer at the moment is "no". Can you point me to some information on them?
Gallery is first and foremost an image presentation system. It's not designed to be a catalog system. The object model and data representation are also tightly tied together and mostly implemented so unless MARC or Dublic Core are really similar to what I already have then the answer is going to continue to be a "no" since I don't have the time and energy to rewrite it all.
Posts: 4
Firstly - Thanks for replying Bharat,
2ndly...
dublin core links:
<!-- BBCode Start --><A HREF="http://dublincore.org/schemas/xmls/simpledc20021212.xsd" TARGET="_blank">XSD sheet for dublin core meta data</A><!-- BBCode End -->
<!-- BBCode Start --><A HREF="http://dublincore.org/" TARGET="_blank">Home page for dublin core</A><!-- BBCode End -->
Dublin core is just a set of metadata tags that can be used to describe the data element - in reference to Gallery - you say that it is foremost a presentation system but by adding database support that leads to the ability to create a cataloge of information. The metadata represented by dublincore include such elements as:
Title
creator
subject
description
publisher
contributor
date
type
format
identifier
source
language
relation
coverage
rights
as you can see - a lot of these will allready be represented within your data schema (but maybe under a different name?)
As for extra work - i aplogise before hand :grin: but i would so dearly love to use your product because i firmly beleive it will deleiver everything that we need. If you do decide not to add any more data elements - then i understand - and i will still look forward to using Gallery 2.
thanks in advance..
adam
Posts: 7
Hey adam11 don't worry you'll be able to do this yourself or hire someone to do it.
There isn't that much to dublin core it just sounds impressive and bharat doesn't need to spend time worrying about it.
Posts: 8194
Writing modules for this sort of thing will be relatively easy. You'll just need to transfer database information stored in MySQL to Dublin Core (it looks like XML? This shouldn't be too hard). However, Gallery is still made to be a photo album, not a cataloging system.
Posts: 4
Thanks guys, you are quite right on both accounts.. It is only a little thing and the important item is this good peice of software. If and when i need to implement "Dublin Core" i will do some investigation, but until then i will use it out of the box.
As for it just being a imaging package.. fair enough, but i beleive it can handle the requirements for our project and will use it asap.
Question (probably been answered elseware and very obivious - so i am expecting to be flamed! :smile: ) Will there be an update script from Gallery 1 to 2 ?
I should realise the answer to this before hand - this "free" product does more than most "paid for" products.. keep up the good work bharat.
As soon as we implement your product i will get a donation to you.
Adam
Posts: 8194
There will be an upgrade script, though I don't think it has been completed yet :smile: