Looks like nothing available for Drupal 6x to simply insert an image node inline.

It sounds so simple, but after two days of research, I still can't make this work.

I simply want enable admin to insert an image node already existing on the site into inline content. Thumbnail version of image would appear inline and clicking on it would take user to the preview version of the image node (or popup a lightbox). I don't want to burden the admin with having to type in the URL to the image's full node.

Please if you know differently than what I found, please let me know.

I think the IMG File filter would have done this, but it has been abandoned
http://drupal.org/project/img_filter

So I looked into inserting nodes, since image is a node too.

But InsertNode module http://drupal.org/project/InsertNode
not available 6x

Inline module
http://drupal.org/project/inline
won't do because it just works with images attached to that page, not image nodes.

Image Assist, IMCE and other text area "browsers" won't do either because they again they just insert a copy of an image.
They do not automatically create the link to a preview (larger version) of the image.

As far as I know, doing the same thing with also not possible using CCK imagefield instead of using nodes created by image.module. .