Magnus wrote:
Erik Moeller wrote:
I propose the following changes:
- As suggested earlier, an image page should always
display the image it refers to.
Makes sense.
See my earlier post on this. IMO the only time an image should be single-click through is when an image is intentionally displayed on the image description page. Otherwise a user should have to click twice to get to the image description page (alt text should work in both cases though).
- Smaller versions of images should be
auto->>generated in a separate directory similar to the >>math/ directory used for texvc's images. The small >>versions would be viewed on the article where the
[[Image]] tag is included, whereas the image would link to the original size version.
Two items with this one:
- A thumbnail should be generated upon upload, so we
don't have to wade through thaton every page display, 2. *if* and *only if* that is necessary. The images DW uploaded lately to replace mine don't really need a thumbnail ;-)
IMO this isn't the best way to do things. As described below smaller images should be created on-the-fly by using markup to specify desired width (and deleted after a specified period of not being used). Then if the [[Image:foo.jpg width=100px]] syntax is used /then/ the thumbnail can be clicked once to get to the image description page (which contains the full-sized displayed image). If there is no image displayed on the image description page then the user would have to click twice to get there (with no changing of the mouse pointer to the little hand). This would give users the greatest amount of control and flexibility. Doing things automatically upon upload would be a nightmare (esp. for images that are inserted in tables; often a very precise image width is needed).
However, auto-determining thumbnail sizes is problematic because a useful size often depends on context. A proper way to handle this may be to support the following variants of the [[Image]] tag:
[[Image:foo.jpg width=100 height=100]] [[Image:foo.jpg width=100]] [[Image:foo.jpg height=100]] -> height or width autocalculated as >>per aspect
ratio
[[Image:foo.jpg size=10%]]
Why not say: *If* we need a thumbnail, it has a width of, say, 150 pixel (just to have a number). Width is the "problematic" factor, on smaller screens. So, for every image wider than this, a thumbnail is used, otherwise the original image.
Again, doing this automatically will cause a great deal of trouble. There are many cases where images larger than even 250 pixels are used and appropriate especially if the images are centered or otherwise do not have text flowing around them. (the optimal range of widths for images /with/ text flowing around them is 150-250 pixels with image detail and type usually playing the deciding factor for the resulting width).
....
...
- It is somewhat counter-intuitive to have the
caption rendered implicitly on a page that includes an [[Image:foo.jpg]] tag. The alternative would be to do away with image pages as regular content-pages altogether. (Realistically, having a separate image namespace may have been a bad idea in the first place.)
How about the alt tag thingy I installed at the test site?
IMO alt tags are needed for images with and without larger versions displayed on the image description page. But please to not get rid of the image description pages. Very often wiki markup is used along with external links. These links are not usable in the form of mouse over text. However, for whatever reason, if at least one image is /not/ displayed on an image description page then the image displayed in the article should have to be clicked twice in order to get to the image description page (with no display of the little hand when the mouse pointer is over the image; just the display of the alt text).
However, having lots of redundant (and often neglected) content is clearly the least preferable choice.
There would, in my opinion, be massive advantages to
having auto-generated small versions of images. This
would greatly increase the usability on many pages, and make the traditional "click to view larger version" approach be usable almost anywhere.
I agree. We'll have to think about what image to use on "printable version" - the thumbnail to keep layout, or the large one for resolution?
Don't forget WYSIWYG. The person should be given the same article layout they see in regular article as with the print version. Using the larger version in the print version would destroy the layout of tables that have images in them (not to mention that the larger versions of images with text flowing around them would result in pages with two word lines next to huge images). IMO on the image description pages we should have "Printable version: [Small image] [Large image]"
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
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Two further requests for images:
1. The ability to rename images *and* update all the references to them. Far too many people upload "Washington.jpg" or something cryptic like "HghHfnr1.jpeg"
2. don't use the file extension as part of the identifier. In other words -- allow an upload of "foo.PNG" to replace "foo.JPG" this would mean using [[image:foo]] only for links.
We've done it like this on UnrealWiki, it's handy for when people use the wrong format (eg JPEG for a line diagram)
Lastly -- is the idea to have a common image space across all languages still on the cards?
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