[Dspace-general] Image Handling in DSpace

[Scott Yeadon]

Hello,

I just wanted to get an idea of whether the DSpace community is 
interested in a patch to be included in a later version of DSpace to 
show image thumbnails in the title browse and search results pages where 
items are comprised of (an) image bitstream(s). I've seen mention of it 
a couple of times and while we have done this locally, I want to 
refactor the code we've done to make it compatible with the mediafilter 
model of 1.2. If people are interested, post to the list with any 
ideas/thoughts/features regarding image handling and I'll start looking 
into a patch.

Also, are people interested in the option of a larger image display to 
be shown on the item display page? For an example of this have a look at 
some image items on the ANU DSpace at http://dspace.anu.edu.au/. While 
we use some (inexpensive) commercial software to do this for performance 
reasons (ImageAlchemy http://www.handmadesw.com/), if there is enough 
interest a version using free software such as ImageMagick or the java 
image libraries could be an alternative implementation (though the 
generation process is likely to be much slower).

Note the following:
- Local concerns may on occasion take priority so I'll do the work in 
stages e.g. 1) basic thumbnail viewing 2) item level images 3) 
additional generators/greater control over images, etc. This way I can 
added functionality incrementally fairly quickly
- Image options will be repository wide (i.e. thumbnails will be shown 
on a repository basis), if there is demand for per collection basis that 
may come later
- Where an item comprises multiple image bitstreams only the first will 
be shown

Anyhow let me know any thoughts/requirements and I'll start looking into 
it...

Thanks.

Scott.