Magazines upload and galleries...

[MacDeath]

while checking "recent changes" in the wiki, i came to the fact that full magazines re often uploaded with every pages individually scanned.


Ok its good, but perhaps not practical to read online, nor to download them i guess...

I hope fgbrain also have some scripts or homemade programs to help him to upload all those files...

Also would be good to have those also available as pdf of any format like this.



Would there be some sort of application in the wiki to put all those in a easy to browse/read gallery.

What could be done ?

[Gryzor]

Erm... where have you been when I was talking about the Downloads section in the forum?


Since they're uploaded here I'm not really sure why fgbrain uploads them to the wiki as well...?

[fgbrain]

Well, I know we all have pdf files.
But we need the wiki to refer to a certain page of a magazine.. Can you do this with pdf files ?

This way it's far better organized for each article I believe.

[CPCLER]

This is the exactly the point 

eg. i can link to any individual page of any cpcmag (at least in theory - when all pages are upload - which is a huge undertaking and very far from completed!)

Like for instance the arcticle of Comal80 ...

So it's not a question of either PDF or JPG (Galeries) but having them both!

/CPCLER

Well, I know we all have pdf files.
But we need the wiki to refer to a certain page of a magazine.. Can you do this with pdf files ?

This way it's far better organized for each article I believe.

[Gryzor]

Well, it makes sense that way indeed. But I'm not sure about the effort involved vs the result; Would it be so much worse if the link was to the entire magazine that the user could download and turn to the relevant page?


Btw, fgbrain, do you use the multiple-upload function at least? I could try upping the number of files allowed for you...

[ralferoo]

while checking "recent changes" in the wiki, i came to the fact that full magazines re often uploaded with every pages individually scanned.

This might not help, but I know the new scanner thing we have at work does this. I'm sure there's probably a way to change its behaviour, but if you just press the scan button it scans a single page and stores it as a single page PDF. As most magazines would need to be taken off the glass and repositioned for the next page, I can imagine this being why...

[MacDeath]

My point is that I saw no full magazine PDF at those magazines page, and it is possible to read pdf with webbrowser, of get those multiple page displayed with a gallery, enabling to scroll each pages, with the Wiki galerry doesn't permit it.

But I didn't it is not good to have each page put individually too.

where have you been when I was talking about the Downloads section in the forum?

oops my bad, i didn't did the research enough...

So it's not a question of either PDF or JPG (Galeries) but having them both!

that's it.

do you use the multiple-upload function at least?

yeay, I tried it recently, while upgrading the Thomson computer page...

[fgbrain]

Btw, fgbrain, do you use the multiple-upload function at least? I could try upping the number of files allowed for you...

Yes, of course.. In fact, I open two windows. By the time the first one finishes uploading, I select all files for the second batch.. And so on!

I think we must have -at least- the official Amstrad magazine (ACU) on line with full documentation. (games/hardware reviews, interviews, features, etc all linked properly with relevant wiki pages)

[TFM]

PDF files can be copied & pasted and translated (Dutch to English f.e.), scanned sites? No way!
Just my two Pfennig. 

[Ygdrazil]

PDF files can be copied & pasted and translated (Dutch to English f.e.), scanned sites? No way!
Just my two Pfennig. 

What do you mean?
A 102 page PDF in poor graphical quality, is better than 102 jpg files in better quality and resolution? 

I see no reason why there can't be both!

/Ygdrazil

[TFM]

You got me totally wrong.

[Gryzor]

TFM means that with PDFs you can manipulate text - copy it, paste it, translate it... (I guess).


fgbrain, would more simultaneous uploads be of use?

[MacDeath]

my point is, some of you guys can make a java applet to run an emulated CPC on an online website with firefox or equivalents...

why no applet to read CPC magazines with the web-browser ?
An applet to enable a better reading of all those jpg wiki galleries ?

would be great to have such custom applet for the CPCwiki afterall.

[Gryzor]

Not sure what you mean, really. A better mediawiki gallery?

[MacDeath]

er... English is somethimes not my mother's tongue after all...

my point is that the galery doesn't enable to zoom easily on the pages (unless opening the picture file at maximum resolution), nor go from one page to another keeping the zoom.

So If I want to "read the magazine) I must open a lot of tabs, then go from one to another, really a lot of clics... but perhaps I am doing it wrong...
point is, I/someone may not want to upload the pdf and only read those magazines while surfing the web/wiki...

[fgbrain]

fgbrain, would more simultaneous uploads be of use?

The only really useful thing would be this:
Can you fix the multi-uploader so that it allows you to choose more than one files, and then automatically add them in the "Source filename:" forms?
At the moment it doesnt accept multi-file selection..

[Morn]

Gryzor, I think MacDeath has something in mind for CPC mags like the BookReader Javascript library used at archive.org. It's GPL, so reuse is allowed.

Example book: [Statuta diocesis Meldensis :] Sinodalia Meldensis diocesis statuta
Source code: openlibrary/bookreader · GitHub

[Gryzor]

@fgbrain: I'll see if there's an updated/better extension for that.


@Morn, MacDeath: the problem is I can't use any old subsystem found out there, there has to be a mediawiki expansion written on top of it. Unfortunately that is not the case with BookReader. And yes, mediawiki image display has sucked for ages, if you ask me... Too bad. There are a few lightbox-related extensions, but I think I had tried one in the past and users didn't like it.

[Morn]

Well, the BookReader script lives on a separate HTML page (or in an iframe) anyway, so my proposed solution would just be a template-generated link from the Wiki ("Read this mag in BookReader") to a CGI page on the server that emits a suitable BookReader page.

The question is if page file names are standardized enough. E.g., if one mag uses "page1.png" for numbering, but another has "page__0001.png", that would complicate things for the script a bit.

[Gryzor]

Well, you hit one of the problems. But even assuming creating a script that would call a page with the correct file, it's still a nightmare to incorporate it in the mediawiki markup. Due to security reasons you can't embed much code in the text...


I just don't think it's worth all the trouble.

[Morn]

An alternate idea would be to use one of the existing MediaWiki extensions for interactive image galleries, e.g. http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:SmoothGallery. I think CPC magazine pages are already embedded in the Wiki with the <gallery> tag, so it would just be a matter of installing the extension and changing those to <sgallery>. Or duplicate the galleries, as it's probably useful to have both a thumbnail version and a browseable version.

[Gryzor]

Well, this is one of the solutions I had considered; it looks nice, but I'm not convinced about its usefulness. I'll install it tomorrow though and see how it goes. Thanks for suggesting it

[Gryzor]

Right, take a look here:


I don't know if I like it...

[MacDeath]

mmmh... can it be bigger so you can also actually read the pages ?

[Gryzor]

Really don't know, didn't have the time to try the options. You can see the options in the extension page link given above (well, actually, not the extension page, but on the gallery script page linked in the extension page).