Saying hi, SVG image editor, Mozile

Hi! I'm rather new to Lenya (played with it for two days)
and I must say 
it looks excellent (very much in principle, perhaps less
when it comes 
to stableness but that's how it is...).

What I'm missing, and planning to provide myself, is good
WYSIWYG 
image/photo support (Mozilla only). My primary goal will of
course be 
getting the site I am working on up but I'll gladly
contribute/integrate 
it with Lenya at some point, if people want it and and if I
manage to 
pull it off.

I already have the image editor itself (from the shattered
pieces of the 
CMS I'm now running away from). Basically it works around
wrapping an 
uploaded photo in some SVG, and modifying that SVG to
provide crop and 
rotation.

Now the editor itself isn't the main point (just use GIMP
etc.), however 
even with external editing there are improvments that can be
done:
- Moving images around in the current editors integrated in
Lenya 
doesn't work very well.
- Uploading fixed images is by nature resolution-dependant
etc. Ideally, 
I think one could aim for uploading something at a high
resolution, and 
use SVG to shrink it to fit naturally in the current page,
perhaps 
depending on "target page width".

What I'm thinking might be my approach follows. I might be a
bit 
far-fetched as my first Lenya-related project but I'd like
to scetch it 
out and perhaps recieve comments on it.

1) Have a look at integrating Mozile first, since it seems
more active 
and cleaner than BXE at the moment, and version 0.8 does
everything BXE 
does from what I can tell (ie, BXE merely adds a layer to
earlier 
versions of Mozile that in 0.8 is featured in Mozile
itself). This is 
probably valuable work in itself?

2) Introduce SVG markup in documents than want to use the
editor (add 
the needed SVG subset to XHTML types etc). Photos used by
the SVG must 
be added as assets as now, but the SVG itself stays in the
document. 
(Though I suppose an SVG sub-asset with linking is also
possible). (In 
effect, SVG will simply act as a more powerful <img>
tag - in addition 
to width/height there's rotation, cropping etc.).

3) Introduce transforms to turn one xhtml+svg doc into one
xhtml+<img> 
and several JPGs.

4) Add an image editor to the Mozile or BXE page editors.
When editing 
the page, the SVG should pass through to Mozilla and be
modified as part 
of the DOM. Image handling is very badly supported in either
of these, 
but the great thing about Mozile is that it modifies the DOM
directly 
and very cleanly, so I can introduce another editor handling
the images 
alongside it and they will cooperate (almost without knowing
about each 
other). (The main image editor will be in a sub-popup window
like in BXE 
today, but moving and dragging the image around is also
important).

My questions, then:
- Anything been done about 1) already? Why/why not?
- General comments welcome.
- If there's anyone beyond myself that's interested in this
plan (or 
parts of it, like 1)) then it would be great to have
somebody to ask 
stupid questions along the way (mostly "in what file
would I find..." 
and other Lenya-related stuff - I have experience with 
Cocoon/XSLT/JavaScript etc) that would be great. (Also, how
open is this 
mailing list and the IRC channel in general to "stupid
questions"? I can 
always figure things out if I use an hour, but that's one
hour less 
spent doing actual work).
- I'd want to work against 1.4. However the version in the
SVN trunk 
seems to break on a daily basis. Is there a "more
stable" version I can 
use (and stick to) without going all the way back to 1.2?
Whatever I 
manage to do probably shouldn't be part of 1.4 anyway so...

--
Dag Sverre Seljebotn

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Dag Sverre Seljebotn wrote:
> 3) Introduce transforms to turn one xhtml+svg doc into
one xhtml+<img> 
> and several JPGs.
>
I meant "introduce pipelines" here. Sorry.

Dag Sverre

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Hi Dag Sverre,

Dag Sverre Seljebotn schrieb:
> Hi! I'm rather new to Lenya (played with it for two
days) and I must say
> it looks excellent (very much in principle, perhaps
less when it comes
> to stableness but that's how it is...).

which version did you try? I guess 1.4 according to the last
paragraph.


> What I'm missing, and planning to provide myself, is
good WYSIWYG
> image/photo support (Mozilla only). My primary goal
will of course be
> getting the site I am working on up but I'll gladly
contribute/integrate
> it with Lenya at some point, if people want it and and
if I manage to
> pull it off.

That sounds very interesting.


> I already have the image editor itself (from the
shattered pieces of the
> CMS I'm now running away from). Basically it works
around wrapping an
> uploaded photo in some SVG, and modifying that SVG to
provide crop and
> rotation.

This is the same way like it is done in Lenya (we provide
scaling ATM).


> Now the editor itself isn't the main point (just use
GIMP etc.), however
> even with external editing there are improvments that
can be done:
> - Moving images around in the current editors
integrated in Lenya
> doesn't work very well.

Agreed, but that's somewhat dependent on the restrictions of
the
underlying XML format. I guess the main challenge would be
to provide
a generic image manipulation/positioning interface and a
mapping
(or hook) to support (virtually) arbitrary XML
representations of
the image attributes.


> - Uploading fixed images is by nature
resolution-dependant etc. Ideally,
> I think one could aim for uploading something at a high
resolution, and
> use SVG to shrink it to fit naturally in the current
page, perhaps
> depending on "target page width".

This is already supported in Lenya 1.4-dev.


> What I'm thinking might be my approach follows. I might
be a bit
> far-fetched as my first Lenya-related project but I'd
like to scetch it
> out and perhaps recieve comments on it.
> 
> 1) Have a look at integrating Mozile first, since it
seems more active
> and cleaner than BXE at the moment, and version 0.8
does everything BXE
> does from what I can tell (ie, BXE merely adds a layer
to earlier
> versions of Mozile that in 0.8 is featured in Mozile
itself). This is
> probably valuable work in itself?

Actually I don't know Mozile well enough to judge this, but
a
better availability of stable and easy-to-use editors is
certainly
cruical for the acceptance of Lenya.


> 2) Introduce SVG markup in documents than want to use
the editor (add
> the needed SVG subset to XHTML types etc). Photos used
by the SVG must
> be added as assets as now, but the SVG itself stays in
the document.

That's an interesting approach, though I have the feeling
that it
would not support the orthogonality between the asset and
the including
document. IMO the includable SVG representation is a
(parameterized)
format of the image's resource type. OTOH, having the SVG in
the
document would allow virtually any presentation options, and
paramerizing the format would certainly increase the
complexity.


> (Though I suppose an SVG sub-asset with linking is also
possible). (In
> effect, SVG will simply act as a more powerful
<img> tag - in addition
> to width/height there's rotation, cropping etc.).

Yes, and additionally it would allow overlays with vector-
and other
bitmap-based image fragments (e.g. add an indicating arrow
to a bitmap).


> 3) Introduce transforms to turn one xhtml+svg doc into
one xhtml+<img>
> and several JPGs.

Yes, I once suggested this approach in an OSCOM talk.
Additionally,
you can generate a PDF including the images from the same
source
document.


> 4) Add an image editor to the Mozile or BXE page
editors. When editing
> the page, the SVG should pass through to Mozilla and be
modified as part
> of the DOM. Image handling is very badly supported in
either of these,
> but the great thing about Mozile is that it modifies
the DOM directly
> and very cleanly, so I can introduce another editor
handling the images
> alongside it and they will cooperate (almost without
knowing about each
> other). (The main image editor will be in a sub-popup
window like in BXE
> today, but moving and dragging the image around is also
important).

I'm very interested in seeing a prototype of this.
Unfortunately I'm
not yet familiar enough with the client-side editing aspects
to
comment on this approach, but it sounds promising.


> My questions, then:
> - Anything been done about 1) already? Why/why not?
> - General comments welcome.
> - If there's anyone beyond myself that's interested in
this plan (or
> parts of it, like 1)) then it would be great to have
somebody to ask
> stupid questions along the way (mostly "in what
file would I find..."
> and other Lenya-related stuff - I have experience with
> Cocoon/XSLT/JavaScript etc) that would be great. (Also,
how open is this
> mailing list and the IRC channel in general to
"stupid questions"? I can
> always figure things out if I use an hour, but that's
one hour less
> spent doing actual work).

I'm very interested in the parts 2) and 3) and will help as
good
as I can 

> - I'd want to work against 1.4. However the version in
the SVN trunk
> seems to break on a daily basis.

Yes, but I'd recommend to use this version anyway. I'd
suggest to have
two local working copies, so you can use one to test if it's
worth
or dangerous to update.

> Is there a "more stable" version I can
> use (and stick to) without going all the way back to
1.2?

No, I don't think there is a more stable version of 1.4.

> Whatever I
> manage to do probably shouldn't be part of 1.4 anyway
so...

That's no problem - it will go completely into a module
which might or
might not be released with 1.4 depending on its stability.
We could
add it to the SVG module, but since this module is not
crucial we
could postpone its release if it is too risky for 1.4.

Thanks a lot for your thoughts!

-- Andreas


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