/* $Id: README,v 1.9.2.3 2006/08/06 04:28:41 vhmauery Exp $ */

Acidfree Albums
Author - Vernon Mauery <vernon At mauery d0t com>
Copyright 2005 Vernon Mauery
Licensed under the GPL v2.0

About
-----------------------------
Acidfree albums were designed with simplicity in mind.  There are as many
web based photo albums as there are people with digital pictures, yet when
Acidfree albums were written, they all were found lacking.  Some were too
fancy, others were too ugly, and others (gasp!) were not even written in php.

To this end, Acidfree albums were created.  This version is the fourth revision
of the albums.  While functionally the same in each version, this is the first
modular enough to be easily distributed and used by others.  Previous versions
have been in use by websites for several years now, but tailoring them into the
various websites was not easy.  But then I found Drupal and fell in love with
it.  But it too was missing a good photo album.  So here it is.

Features
-----------------------------
* easy to install (well it was for me, but others may report differently)
* very configurable via the various admin venues
* node based -- tied into drupal's core
* full featured, yet simple
* uses the filemanager module for its backend file store
* fully themeable
* best darn looking photo album you have ever seen
* handles images using drupals image toolkit
* can handle most video types (with different thumbnail options)
* handles node_access grants gracefully (think Organic Groups)
* has a built in filter for adding images to other node content
  with tags like [acidfree:nnnn...] (see instructions below)

Install
-----------------------------
1. install the filemanager module from the drupal modules page and set it up 
   (this includes creating the table, setting paths, creating directories, etc.
   on the admin/settings/filemanager page)

2. untar acidfree directory into your modules directory
3. enable the acidfree module on the admin modules page
4. go to http://yoursite.dom/acidfree/test (or 
   http://yoursite.dom/?q=acidfree/test) to check your install and settings.
   Follow any instructions it offers.
5. create albums and content!!

Advanced Options
-----------------------------
Acidfree can now protect your image/video files with the Filemanager module's
private filestore.  To use this feature, you must be using a node_access module
such as Organic Groups, Node Privacy by Role, etc.

Acidfree has a filter so you can add thumbnails of your images to the body
of other nodes with a tag like [acidfree:nnnn ...].  Before using this feature,
you must enable it by going to Administer -> Input Formats (admin/filters) and
configure each input type you want to have the [acidfree:nnnn] tags in.  Hit
configure for the type (e.g. admin/filters/1) and check the box by
Acidfree Inline Filter.  Hit save and you will see
'You may use [acidfree:xx] tags to display acidfree videos or images inline.'
in the 'Formatting guidelines' section on the node edit pages.  Read the online
documentation at http://vernon.mauery.com/content/acidfree_manual/advanced_topics
or the inline help provided by your installed acidfree/drupal site.

Now that Acidfree uses the drupal image toolkit to do its image processing, you
can use whatever toolkit you desire.  I have written one that works with
php-imagick (libMagick for php) which uses the same libraries ImageMagick does,
but without needing to fork and exec a new process.  To use it, install the
php-imagick libraries, enable them in the php.ini file and copy the
image.imagick.inc file to the drupal includes directory and select it from the
admin/settings image manipulation section.  Another option for this is the
image.imagemagick.inc file that is distributed with the image.module.  If you
like the forky-execy method and don't want to install php-imagick or set up gd
(which is th e default toolkit), you can use the binaries you used with
previous versions of Acidfree with the ImageMagick toolkit.

Of course, Acidfree also offers the option for lossless jpeg rotation via
exiftran or jpegtran.  Set the path of your preferred option in
admin/settings/acidfree and Acidfree will use it to rotate images instead of
the image toolkit option.  This is provided for all you jpeg artifact snobs
(myself included.)

I copied some of the video plugin stuff from video.module to better display
more types of videos.  And then to upload them, you have three options for
thumbnails: none, user supplied, or mplayer.  For the none option, a static
image will be used for all your videos and you must specify at upload-time the
resolution of the video.  For user supplied, you must provide a frame from the
video that is the same resolution as the video itself (it will be resized to
make a thumbnail.)  As the final option (which I use and prefer,) you can use
mplayer to extract the first frame to make a thumbnail out of that.

Better mime handling (hopefully).  We can use PECL's fileinfo extension (for
those fearful of exec'ing `file -ib`), file -ib, or a guess based on file
extensions recognized by Acidfree. Take your pick.  Acidfree will automatically
use its best guess depending on which options it can find and use.  No setup
required (unless you are using fileinfo extension and then you obviously have
to install it and enable it in php.ini)
