nstrassner [nstrassner]

File attached.

Sorry. It looked like it attached to me (I browsed for it, attached it, and saved the message).

Now I realize that that I forgot about the 1mb upload limit. The program is small, but with both the state and country map gifs, it was a bit over 3 megs.

So, what you'll find in the upload is all of the states, but only countries that begin with "A" (Afganistan, Aruba, Australia, Austria, etc.).

I ask you for recommendations (if you approve of my work) regarding how to get the user the two data subdirectories, '/countries' and '/states'. I could provide a separate download page on my server, if necessary. Would I be the only developer to have data larger than a meg??

Best,
Norm

Yes, I see why you are right. That was my initial instinct (as you can see that hook was commented out), but for some reason I thought that the other hook was as good, but I do see the reasons to use hook_filter.

New file works with hook_filter.

Best,
Norm

One more note.
If approved, the final state and country flag GIFs will be of the same width. Height will vary slightly due to the actual shape of the flags, but widths will remain constant. Users can change the widths and heights inside the bracketed flag. The flags in the evaluation file I uploaded are of slightly different widths.

Unfortunately, due to the actual flag sizes, there is no way to make all of them the same dimensions, except by the user telling each flag to be exactly the same size. If that is the case, some of the flags will be somewhat distorted in shape, but I see no way around that, at least for now.

At least the native widths will be the same. If requested, I can work up two other directories that folks can download that will put the GIFs to the same height, instead of the same width. Also, the gifs can be brought into Photoshop, et.al. and altered by the user. The user can even change the flags, as long as they are labeled with the correct country or state name.

-Norm

Sorry. I did not change the status to 'needs review' on my last post which was...

I didn't get your Country Icons note before I changed and uploaded the source of World Flags.

I did not find the Country Icons module before, because I wrongly limited my search to "flags" and found nothing useful, so thank you very much for pointing me to Country Icons.

That said, I would like to discuss for a moment the pluses and minuses of incorporating the modules.

Country Icons is an API that uses direct PHP calls to access the icons, while my module lets any user with instructions on how to construct the tag which places a flag in their page or story to do so, without enabling PHP for the user(!!).

And while it is a plus to marry these two modules for the given flexibility, I suspect that not every user who requires icons will require the larger flag images (and vice versa) and having another few kilo- or megabytes of images that will never be used on a particular site seems like a waste of real estate to me, especially for sites with limited storage (yes, they exist!).

So, if you think I should add to Country Icons, I will go ahead and contact Tom Kirkpatrick and discuss it with him. Otherwise I'd be happy to have a stand alone module.

-Norm

The other module is able to provide a unique file that with the sprite technique avoid to load 100 different image files.

I have examined the Country Icons module carefully and played with its exposed methods. While useful, I see a couple of problems, but please correct me if I am in error:

(1) As far as I can determine, each sprite needs to have the same dimensions, but please correct me if I'm wrong. All Country flags, and state flags for that matter, do not have the same dimensions.

(2) I tried to find a sprite generator (that actually worked), but the only ones I can find are online and are limited to either .5Mb or 1.0Mb zip files. With the size of my flags, the zip is > 3mb.

(3) So, I may be able to use this module as a required module if necessary, but I don't think I can use the sprites functionality.

(having just the flag images for the country with a name starting with A doesn't mean to provide the most used images).

As I had mentioned, the original zip file I made of the module and flags was over three megabytes, so I could not upload it to you. I have flags for 251 countries and all 50 states, but I only included a few country flags (just ones starting with 'A') so you could evaluate the module. I may have to make arrangements for users to download the images separately if I am not allowed to include them in the zip or tar file.

Ok, we'll wrap this up shortly because I can see you will be insistent on me using the API module. For my own needs, on the educational site this is for, I'll use a customized version, but for the Drupal site offering, I'll implement the other module's API and upload new files in a day or so that hopefully meets your specs.

I am not going to approve a module that uses 3 MB of images, though.

I realize that this module does not even approach anywhere near the value, complexity and usefulness of Views or Ubercart, but those modules are 3.4mb and 2.39mb, respectively so, with all due respect, I need to ask a pertinent question: How, exactly, are you determining the maximum acceptable size of a particular module?

Is there a set policy on that that I missed in the contributor's docs? (and if so, I apologize for not seeing it). I'm sure you'll agree that in all fairness it cannot be entirely subjective, but even it if is allowed to be so, there must be some consensus that applies(?)

What I will do is to provide a smaller version of the flag collection and offer users the option to download larger versions of the flags from another server. I believe that this is done quite a bit with other modules who require, or use in some way, PHP or JS code that is not GPL.

-Norm

I actually do thank you for having me interface with Country Icons, as it has given the module much greater flexibility.

You'll see by the readme.txt file (and help) that I made quite a few changes and now allow easy additions of move graphic set directories and programmatic search options.

Also, the name is changed to Inline Graphic Sets.

As an example of a new graphic set, I included a state flag set that's about 512k. I can make it smaller if you insist, but I would like to offer it as is. Additional sets can be made by the user, or downloaded from my server (eventually).

I look forward to your review.

_{[Edited by kiamlaluno to remove the sentence all in bold]}

Your recommendations are well taken. As a relative newbie (to Drupal, not to programming), I see the value in accessing the Token module and keeping the code lean and mean. I will examine the Token module in detail and see how I can work with it.

1) There doesn't seem to be a statement about the provenance of the icons - are these GPL icons? Did you make them yourself or did you obtain them from some GPL'd source? If so, what is that source? Due to the detail involved, and the statement you made above about not having the capability to turn them into sprites, I'm guessing you didn't make them yourself. They absolutely cannot be put into Drupal CVS without attribution and without knowing they're GPL licensed.

I collected these flags from non-copyrighted (e.g. public domain) sources over years for use in my video post production projects for various clients. I also have spent the last few days writing a program called "SpriteO'Matic" that makes sprites and sprite CSS files, so that won't be a problem.

2) The code needs some serious scrubbing to conform to Drupal coding standards. You should install and use the Coder module to identify the changes you need to make.

As neat as I have tried to be, I'm sure it is far from perfect, so I will do what you suggested.

3) Where's your hook_schema()? I don't see how this module can possibly install because you call drupal_install_schema('inline_graphics_sets') in your hook_install() but you don't have a hook_schema() implementation in your source code.

Yes, that was an oversight and thanks for pointing it out.

4) What's Thumbs.db? It's huge but I see no evidence in the code that it's used anywhere.

I keep forgetting to delete that file. MS Windows makes that hidden file for internal use in any directory that includes graphic files (much the same way Macs have used resource forks). It is entirely unnecessary and I will make sure I delete it from any further graphic directories.

This will take awhile, as I need to completely familiarize myself with the Token module.

Thanks for the report.