Re: [Nautilus-list] Thumbnail managing draft

[Darin Adler <darin bentspoon com>]

On Tuesday, July 10, 2001, at 08:09  AM, Jens Finke wrote:

> Well, it's been some time ago now but I have finally written a first draft
> about thumbnail managing.  You can find it also online at
> http://triq.net/~pearl/thumbnail-spec/

I personally don't understand the need for two qualities for thumbnails. 
If we must have two qualities, can't we have high quality as the default, 
and just use a .lq suffix for the low-quality ones?

Instead of "The good thing about this is that it also detects thumbnails 
which didn't set their mtime to the original mtime and regenerates them." 
you should say, "If a program that generates thumbnails doesn't set the 
mtime to the original, it's not a fatal problem. Another program that 
implements the rule properly will simply regenerate the thumbnail."

In the places where you say "informations" it should just be "information"
. Instead of "random text strings" you should say "arbitrary text strings"
. Instead of "store also" it should be "also store".

There should be a URL for the PNG standard in the document.

Perhaps the keys should be "OriginalHeight" and "OriginalWidth" and 
"OriginalSize" to avoid confusion.

You don't mention if the .failed file should include the ".hq" or the ".lq"
 suffix or not. What if there's already a ".lq" thumbnail and you fail to 
create a ".hq" one? Should you create a ".failed" file or not?

It's not good to have each program generating thumbnails separately 
deciding that the image is too big and creating ".failed" files based on 
different rules. I think this feature needs some more thought. Also, an 
image format that is unknown to one program might be known to another. How 
will the ".failed" files handle that.

More importantly, in what circumstances should a program take a ".failed" 
file as reason to not even try to re-thumbnail, and under what 
circumstances should the program try again?

Typo: "programm", "programms".

The Thumbnail size section should mention that thumbnails of different 
sizes go into different directories. Why do sizes use separate directories,
 but qualities, use a file naming scheme? I think qualities should use 
directories as well.

When files are deleted, how do thumbnail files and directories (especially 
the ones in ~/.thumbnails in various users' home directories) get deleted?

You need to define what an "escaped URI" is. Nautilus uses a particular 
scheme for this that may or may not be appropriate for others.

This document does not describe the rules for how programs manipulate 
these directories that prevent them from getting in each other's way. What 
prevents a program from reading a partially made thumbnail that another 
program is in the middle of making right at that moment? That is not just 
a theoretical problem. And closely related to this is the use of the 
".failed" files. What are the rules about respecting and managing them?

Thanks for this first cut!

    -- Darin