In the Mustard Seed Media podcast http://www.mustardseedmedia.com/podcast/episode29 Rob said IMCE is the past and that the Media module is the future and that using IMCE for image upload should be abandoned in favor of the upcoming Media module.
While the roadmap and intended featuritis looks great .. I have an important use case which apparently isn't being considered. Namely attaching images and perhaps other media to comments.
It looks like this is only considering adding them to the node, and not to the comments.
I run a busy forum using Drupal and frequently the conversation is in the form of pictures, not words. The natural thing in a forum setting is to attach images in comments just as readily as in nodes. Further most forum-specialized systems support uploading images to comments very readily. I'm concerned that it will be a step backwards in this regard if IMCE is abandoned in favor of Media module.
Is it possible for IMCE to use some kind of API in media module so when IMCE uploads an image it attaches it to the right place?
Comments
It should still be possible
It should still be possible to attach images to comments with Image Assist and similar. I don't think you have to worry about it.
If worst comes to worst, you
If worst comes to worst, you can always use Node Comments to turn the comments into nodes.
Functionality not the concern, but time
reikiman, I don't think there's too much to worry about. The dream behind the Media project is that it provide a common base for other modules. For example, a module may be created to fit a specific task but it will no longer be isolated from the rest of the media ecosystem. As a result, modules that deal with media will have tighter integration. However, it may take a significant amount of time for maturity.
I probably came across more
I probably came across more worried than I really am.
I wanted to make a good case to media module people to consider this important use case of media in comments. That's why I asked whether it's plausible IMCE could use some API from this new media module. Or maybe it's not IMCE but that there needs to be some method to attach things like pictures to comments, and it's a common usage pattern.
Further point is it's important the method for attaching an image be the same whether it's to a comment or to a node. It would be confusing to users to say "if you're posting a node, do this, if you're posting a comment, do that" because the users aren't going to grok the difference between node and comment.
Part of the roadmap is to
Part of the roadmap is to offer wysiwyg support, which will require integration with the wysiwyg module, possibly inline, and certainly filters. As this aspect works mainly with textarea form elements, it should work fine with comments as well as nodes. In fact, Embedded Media Field will soon have inline support (this is already in place for d5, but still needs to be committed), which will work as well with comments as with nodes.
Aaron Winborn
Drupal Multimedia (book, in October!)
AaronWinborn.com (blog)
Advomatic (work)
Aaron Winborn
Drupal Multimedia (my book, available now!)
AaronWinborn.com
Advomatic
What about something like
What about something like the Comment Upload module?
The way I would see it would be Imagefield/Imagecache, Filefield and Comment Upload. I am not sure what system Comment Upload uses though: the core upload module, Filefield or both.
test
testing...