Release Notes

Blursoft Image Modification Processor (IMP) v 0.2.0

Release Date: 23 September 2004

IMP is a modest program that can be used to watch image directories and automatically create thumbnailed galleries when new images are added to the directory or subdirectories. The look and other features of the gallery can be controlled through a simple XML configuration file.

IMP 0.2.0 is a Technology Preview. While this software works well enough to be relied upon as your primary gallery creator in most cases, we make no guarantees of its performance or stability. It is a pre-release product and should not be relied upon for mission-critical tasks.

For the Hasty

impd.exe calls MakeGallery.exe and provides a mechanism to monitor an image directory. At any time you are able to use MakeGallery.exe standalone to regenerate thumbs or index.html files.

To run the program in daemon mode you'll want to run a screen session:

prompt> screen

Now run the daemon on a folder you want to watch, optionally directing any output to a logfile.

prompt> mono impd.exe -d /home/me/public_html/images > mylogfile.txt

Please consult the IMP documentation or pass the -? option to find out more options.
Once the IMP is running you can close your screen terminal and it should remain in the background, running.

NOTES:
If you are running the IMP on a directory tree that already has tons of directories and images, you might want to pass the -e option, which forces it to call MakeGallery recursively on the entire directory structure.

prompt> mono impd.exe -d /home/me/public_html/images -e >mylogfile.txt

Be sure to edit config.MakeGallery.xml before running impd.exe to ensure all the parameters are as you'd like them.

What's New

Here's what's new in this release of IMP:

IMPd

Removed built-in wait periods; now use mutexes for intelligent locking
Startup information read from config.impd.xml
Recurse on startup and delete any stray 'locked' files from previous runs or crashes
New commandline options:

Thumbnail all existing directories at startup with '-e'
Generate a default configuration file and quit with '-g'

MakeGallery v 0.5.0

No longer create thumbnails if they are present already (unless regenerate_thumbs is true)
Support for full gallery titles; you pick the prefix and the title
Support to choose thumbnail link titles
CSS support for custom-look galleries
Read configuration information from config.MakeGallery.xml
New gallery styles: Clean and SuperClean
Recursive gallery creation option
Support for adding footers to gallery pages
Support for custom-named thumbnail directories (put all thumbs in a subdirectory if you want)

System Requirements

Windows or Linux
ImageMagick
Mono 1.0+

Downloading IMP

Our website provides the latest IMP binaries.

Installing IMP

Once you have downloaded an IMP compressed archive, follow these instructions to install:

Extract the compressed archive and run impd.exe within a screen session.

Running the IMP

In a typical setup you're a system admin or a user with some directory that you use in your html folder for galleries or images. For example,
user Jake might want to make galleries in a folder /home/jake/public_html/galleries. You'll want to run the imp daemon (impd.exe).

To do this, cd into the directory where you unpacked the IMP files. Type 'mono impd.exe -r -d /home/jake/public_html/galleries' from within
a screen session (as IMP is supposed to run all the time). The '-r' option makes IMP monitor the galleries folder recursively. Now when folders and images are added to directories within the galleries folder IMP will create HTML galleries.

At this stage IMP assumes it's being run before images are uploaded. If you have a directory of images already in place you can do one of two things:

Add another file to that directory to kick off IMP (or delete and add the same one back)
Manually run MakeGallery.exe on that folder (for example, type 'mono MakeGallery.exe -d ~/public_html/galleries/LondonTrip').

Type 'mono impd.exe -?' for a list of options.

At any time you can change the config.xml file produced by MakeGallery to reflect how you want the galleries to look. The changes take effect on subsequent image transfers (because only at that time will MakeGallery be called upon to process the images and write the HTML).

Uninstalling IMP

To uninstall IMP, follow these instructions:

Delete the folder that contains the IMP-related files.

Known Issues

Gallery creation latency. IMP uses the FileSystemWatcher class of the .NET framework. Under linux this class uses FAM for filesystem monitoring if it's available. Otherwise it defaults to polling, which can be more CPU intensive. To ensure all OnCreated threads are complete there are inherent delays within the program. The HTML gallery is published once all images are transferred to the directory and a period of time proportional to the number of new images has passed.
Images and image directories with spaces in their names won't be processed correctly.

Troubleshooting

If IMP stops working when you log out it's probably due to FAM quitting since the user who started it isn't there anymore. It is preferable to start IMP from within a screen session then logout or quit the terminal window.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why does this bish use so much CPU?