From: Chris Pine <cpine@...>
Date: 2004-12-22T11:43:45+09:00
Subject: Re: Is there any ruby compatible graphics/imaging utilities ...

Sarah Tanembaum wrote:
> Thanks Kaspar. This is what I have. I have thousands of pictures that I 
> took over time using digital cameras as well as old photos that I 
> scanned. I'd like to create an application that I can use it using the 
> web as well as on the native environment(Windows, Linux, Solaris) for 
> cataloging.

We did something similar:
   http://pine.fm/FamilyPictures/

Is this sort of what you want, because I could just give you the code if 
it suits your needs.

I'm not using a database, just the normal file system (in this case 
ReiserFS, if you care).  Pages are generated by a ruby CGI program 
called by Apache2.  Image resizing is done with RMagick/ImageMagick. 
The info for each picture is stored in one huge Ruby hash (of hashes). 
It's all very low-tech, but works well.  The pages take a few seconds to 
load; that's the load time for the gigantic hash I mentioned.  (I will 
probably set up a dRB server to hold the hash data for me, so I can get 
rid of that load time... when I get around to it.  :)

There's also an "admin" page for telling us about errors or 
discrepancies in our picture data, which you might not see.

Finally, I wrote another program to download all of the pictures off of 
our camera's memory card, extract the time the pictures were taken, and 
generate some fill-in-the-blank Ruby code for adding the pictures to the 
huge picture_info hash.

Like I said, it's low-tech, but it works.

Oh, and if you are looking for a Ruby tutorial, you might want to check 
mine out:
   http://pine.fm/LearnToProgram/

It's assuming no previous programming experience, so depending on where 
you're coming from, it might be a bit slow.  But just in case you might 
find it helpful, I just thought I'd mention it.

Chris