Posted by joachim on September 4, 2009 at 1:35pm
The maintainers of image module (me, sun) and the main author of image module in core (quicksketch) got together over lunch at DrupalCon Paris, to figure out the future of image module in D7.
The general plan so far:
- image module itself is obsolete. Just add an image field to whatever content type you want.
- image_attach should become a formatter / widget for CCK nodereference (which isn't in core). As for the current ability to add a new image node on the fly, there are currently several 'add & reference' modules (see the Duplicated Modules Hall of Shame...)
- image_import will die. There is a need for a general filefield importer. Features we currently have such as folder tree importing, taxonomy, etc -- these will have to be feature requests on this module (which is currently hypothetical, AFAIK).
- img_assist will be replaced by the inline module
- image gallery will become a module that depends on views: formatting plugins, field handlers, relationships, and default views. One debate we had was how to make sure that there is an image content type with an image field for the default views to refer to. The option we decided on was to create a content type in the module hook_install. The advantage of this over using hook_node_info is that we don't need to provide hook_form, hook_access, etc etc -- all things that we really don't care about. If there are disdvantages to this approach that we haven't spotted please let us know!
Comments
Image and Image Gallery were
Image and Image Gallery were nice in D6, but they didn't offer enough control or layout customization. Views solves the layout problem, and CCK solves the lack of a "required field" option. :)
Out of all the inline image solutions, I don't really like any of them, for D6. Make sure the interface is nice-looking by default, because having to custom theme every little thing gets to be a bit too much.
I think there needs to be a WYSIWYG interface in core. I tried way too many of these in D6, and they all used JavaScript to overlap the default text fields. The fields should be replaced without JavaScript, in core. My favorite text field add-on, currently, is BUEditor. It has great admin controls, and the interface works very well. It isn't WYSIWYG, though!
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Core WYSIWYG Unlikely
It's very unlikely that core will have WYSIWYG, and for good reason. It's huge, none of the options are really great, and it's not at all required to make a good Drupal site (I personally disable it for myself when I have to edit content anyway).
Ken Winters
I don't mean the entire
I don't mean the entire "WYSIWYG" module. I mean a single WYSIWYG style built into the core admin settings. I rather like what you get on Blogger forms. Perhaps we could come up with something similar.
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Which plugin doesn't really
Which plugin doesn't really matter; they're all huge and inherently optional, meaning it's very unlikely to end up in core.
Distributions like Acquia are the appropriate place to include modules like that, rather than core.
Ken Winters
I like the idea of huge
I like the idea of huge modules in core. I want everything I would need in one package. It's easier to delete or disable than install and enable. Besides, a lot of fairly large modules are already in core for D6 and even more in D7. D7 supposively has imagecache built in. This is great in my opinion.
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Future Solutions
I had an interesting discussion in IRC about this.
Once the d.o redesign launches, installation profiles will be featured prominently (so that new users can easily get the modules they need but wouldn't know about) and WYSIWYG could easily be in the majority of them.
Ken Winters
I don't even like the WYSIWYG
I don't even like the WYSIWYG module package. It isn't nearly as good as BUEditor in terms of easy setup or functionality. We want a BUEditor with WYSIWYG tools. I can almost accomplish this using the live preview modules.
Visit my under-construction site. Let me know what you think. Thanks.
Have you looked at this
Have you looked at this module:
http://drupal.org/project/linodef
It works like inline and already have WYSIWYG integration, as well as BUEditor integration.
The plan for image gallery sounds very good. Is there a plan to remove image as image gallery dependency in D6?
Linodef sounds (reads) very
Linodef sounds (reads) very promising. I'll have to toy with it sometime.
There is no plan to remove Image Gallery's dependency on Image, and honestly, there isn't much point to. If I want similar functionality from ImageCache, I can use Views and/or Node Gallery or some other gallery module. I would focus on D7 Image Gallery's dependencies. That said, I have yet to see a working Galleria style View. Views Galleria doesn't work the way you'd expect.
Visit my under-construction site. Let me know what you think. Thanks.
Image gallery D7 won't need
Image gallery D7 won't need the old image module. It'll need the filefield-based core image module
And it will largely be a set of Views plugins.
Whether it should be made more generic so the gallery styles can be used with content other than images is an interesting point on which I'd welcome opinions and ideas.
(would make a change from the totally OT stuff about wysiwyg above :/)
The two problems I had with
The two problems I had with D6 Image Gallery were...
1. It used taxonomy, so you had two pages for each category: the gallery page and the taxonomy list.
2. You couldn't make images required.
Both problems were fixed by using ImageCache, CCK, and Views instead. I keep wondering why D6 doesn't have ImageCache in core? Guess it doesn't make much difference now. It was just misleading, when I was new to Drupal, to see the Image module built in. I assumed it was my best option.
Visit my under-construction site. Let me know what you think. Thanks.
I see, it'll be in D7. I was
I see, it'll be in D7.
I was the one who inquired about the generalization of the new image gallery in the issue, and of course... I want it quite bad. :)
Please make it happen!
Thanks. :D
Thank you so very much. :)
Thank you so very much. :)
Documentation
The only thing I think you didn't mention here is documentation. I really like the direction all of this is headed, but it took me several hours of reading to figure out how I should approach image handling on a new Drupal site I am building. Let's just try and make/improve on some of the doc pages that help explain the mishmash of media modules (especially the top tier ones) and which are on the way up and which are on the way out.
Off to spend some time on that very task now...