Improvements for -isilox

[rhubarb]

It seems after all that there are other people using the -isilox or -misilox formats.
I was using -misilo for a couple of years (it uses the old isiloc instead of isiloXC) before switching to get the power of the latest isiloXC versions.
One problem with using -isilox is that the tags for the .ixl file that isiloxc uses are hard coded in sitescooper.
I recently worked on a fix for this - that lets you use your own .ixl file generated by the isiloX gui tool as a sort of template for sitescooper. Basically, if you want to change the image format options or category or so, you can simply create an ixl file and point to it with a tag in the .cf file.
I posted this fix to the mailing list but noone has checked it in yet as far as I know.
If there are any cvs-privileged sitescooper users out there - let me know if I should post this fix again.

(Actually I'm thinking of switching to Plucker since it seems to be as good as iSilo now, and I dont want to pay for the upgrade to Isilo 4 - but I havent quite made the switch yet)

[ignatz]

I saw your recent post on the sitescooper mailing list. I have not yet had a chance to play with your modifications, but I like the idea. Perhaps you could post your mods again here, with some reasonably explicit instructions as to how people can modify their existing installs of sitescooper to use your new code? That would be great, thanks.

[stobs]

I cannot find that patch on the list http://sitescooper.org/pipermail/sitescooper-talk/, yes please post it here.

I solved that problem with a simple patch:
so I get my resolution and color of the pictures.

# diff Main.pm.orig Main.pm

2435,2437c2435,2437
< <Dither value="yes"/>
< <MaximumWidth value="224"/>
< <MaximumHeight value="198"/>
---
> <Dither value="no"/>
> <MaximumWidth value="315"/>
> <MaximumHeight value="315"/>
2441c2441
< <BitDepth4 value="include"/>
---
> <BitDepth4 value="exclude"/>
2443c2443,2445
< <BitDepth16 value="exclude"/>
---
> <BitDepth16 value="include"/>
> <LossyLevel value="all"/>
> <LossyQuality value="75"/>

Originally Posted by ignatz

Perhaps you could post your mods again here, with some reasonably explicit instructions as to how people can modify their existing installs of sitescooper to use your new code? That would be great, thanks.

[ignatz]

Originally Posted by stobs

I cannot find that patch on the list http://sitescooper.org/pipermail/sitescooper-talk/, yes please post it here.

Here's the link to the article in the mailing list archive. I would still appreciate some instruction for those of us who are a bit more perl impaired... I haven't had time to even try to incorporate these mods, and I'm actually investigating Plucker a bit right now... Haven't tried yet to see how well Sitescooper supports it.

[ignatz]

Rhubarb, hope you don't mind, but I took the liberty of zipping up all the files that you posted on the sitescooper list and posting them here. I have also included the original posting from the mailing list as a sort of defacto instruction set. Still have not tried this. (I spent the weekend experimenting with Plucker, but I think that I'm coming back to iSilo now.) Hope to get to it soon, and will report back once I have.

[ignatz]

These changes have been checked in to the latest Sitescooper bleeding edge. Here's the mail from the Sitescooper mailing list. This looks like good stuff and worth the iinvestigating. Thanks Chris!

[scoop] Checked in improved support for isiloXC

Chris Werner chriswerner at mail.telepac.pt
Mon Mar 22 16:36:34 GMT 2004

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Improved support for isiloXC:

Thanks Jason for extending developer privileges so that I was able to check
this in.

Short explanation:
==================
If you read your scoops with isilo and you use the -misilox or -isilox
argument, but you don't like the default settings that sitescooper passes to
isiloxc - perhaps you want more colours, or a different category - then this
fix will help you.

To take advantage of it, simply:
i) run the isiloX gui tool
ii) in a new file, add a single document (there can be only one!)
iii) setup the options you want for bit depth, table handling, etc
iv) forget about the source, destination, and link options, these are
overridden by sitescooper
v) save as default_isilox.ixl in your sitescooper main directory
vi) edit sitescooper.cf and uncomment the last line

(For site-specific settings read the details below and the site_params.html
doc)

Detailed explanation:
=====================
1. Added a new param to sitescooper.cf "ISiloDefaultIxlFile" that points to
an .ixl file in the file system.
This means that users can change the iSiloX options by using the iSiloX GUI
tool to create a new document, change all the options, then save as a .ixl
file. The <Source> and <Destination> tags of the document are stripped and
replaced by sitescooper but the rest is used for generating the isilox pdb.

More details are given in the comments in sitescooper.cf.

The most common likely use for this is to allow the users of -isilox to
specify global settings for things like image depth, color, inclusion,
dithering etc, and perhaps for category too.

2. Added a new site param called "ExtraISiloIxlTags", to allow ixl settings
specific to a site. Updated doc/site_params.html, so see this for more
details.

This is a little different in that the user has to specify a set of
top-level tags for the .ixl file. These get appended to the generated file
thus overriding the defaults (or overriding the global options if the new
config param is used). This takes advantage of the fact that isilox
tolerates the tags appearing more than once by simply taking the last tag
and ignoring earlier copies (or at least its xml parser does).

So you can set general options in your .ixl file and override specific
options in the .site files.
The fact that you have to override the whole tag such as <ImageOptions>
means that you can't override, say bitdepth separately from dithering, but
its still pretty powerful. And simpler and more durable (ie resitant to
changes in isilox) than adding a bunch of new site params.

cheers
Chris

PS: changed the following files:

CVS: Modified Files:
CVS: sitescooper/sitescooper.cf sitescooper/doc/site_params.html
CVS: sitescooper/lib/Sitescooper/Main.pm
CVS: sitescooper/lib/Sitescooper/SCF.pm
CVS: Added Files:
CVS: sitescooper/default_isilox.ixl