This page will showcase specific issues/features that example modules handle particularly well, or at least better than others. Perhaps it could also develop into a standing-but-evolving community "wishlist" for future development, a description of a future best-of-all-possible-worlds "One Image-handling Module to Rule Them All".

This purpose of this page is to both showcase examples of nice features and versatility in existing modules and help keep track of (perhaps unrealistic/idealistic) goals for "One Image-handling Module to Rule Them All". Note this latter is purely auser-oriented wishlist, and it is likely that underlying file-handling limitations in Drupal core prevent them from being realized for the time being - see new D7 file APIs for more information.

Many people, used to carefully organizing their files in hierarchical directory structures, are disappointed when they realize that most file handling modules in Drupal tend to just put all files into one flat directory. Some people feel that storing many tens of thousands of files in one folder can create problems with some operating systems, while others state such problems no longer exist with modern OSs.

Ideally, an uploading module would give the content author the flexibility to select and, with permission, create new target directories. The administrator should be able to disable this functionality and specify a token-based scheme to automate the directory selection/creation process, based on variables like filetype, user and date (see Upload Path). Or the administrator-configured rules could be presented as the default, and the user allowed to override.

One module should be able to make use of any files already in the site filesystem regardless of what modules was used to upload that file or how else that file is currently being used, rather than the current situation where each module has exclusive management over its own set of files and they cannot be re-used or managed by other modules.

Many people would like to be able to move files to different directories after the initial upload, and ideally a central file management module could do so with any files in the system. (See for interface examples WebFM and Filemanager, and to some extent Asset module.) Such a module should be able to freely move files around, and all other modules' references to the file locations should be automatically updated. Ultimately it should also be possible to have html links embedded in content updated as well as inline macro tags.