spgm-updates Mailing List for SPGM (Simple Picture Gallery Manager)

Hello folks,

In my last email, which I sent almost one year ago, I was talking about my
relocation to Poland.
Well, I have been living here in Warsaw for 9 months now, and as expected,
there has been much work ! I hardly had time to answer a few questions, bug
reports, feature and support requests... But I finally had a few hours to
dedicate to SPGM, trying to flush those open posts, and there comes last
version : 1.4.5

This is a maintenance release providing various bug fixes and small
features.
People who want to upgrade should pay attention to the release notes, as
spgm.conf and spgm.thm files must be updated as well.
See http://spgm.sourceforge.net/?lg=us&id=changelog for more details.


Here is a little summary about where things are...
For the last months of 2005, I had been working on a complete rewrite of
SPGM. The design was over and the first hundreds of code lines were written.
PHP5 was the target language, as I wanted to leverage its object-oriented
capabilities to implement this new design. But today, I still do not intend
the script to require PHP5. Yet, I would like to offer the main predicted
features (amongst which real template and plugin support). So my task for
the weeks to come will be to tend to the new architecture using PHP4. Hence,
SPGM 2.0 is still in progress, and will eventually be a PHP4 application.

I have also decided to temporarily give the Google adSense program a try, to
compensate in a way the significantly growing amount of support requests. In
a few weeks from now, I will decide to stick with it or not...

Till next time, I wish you all a merry Christmas and a happy new year !

Sylvain

Hello everyone,

I just wanted to let you know that I have recently seized a
profesionnal opportunity in Warsaw, Poland. I'll be living there for
at least 2 years, as of March. I am really excited about moving from
Paris and getting to know this new life, so be sure I'll put some
pictures online using a well-known little tool ! ;)
As you can imagine, things will probably be a bit hectic at the
beginning. Don't wonder why releasing SPGM updates may take time
during the following weeks/months...

Talk to you from there soon !

Sylvain

Hello everyone,

I am very pleased to release this maintenance revision for this one
occasion. It celebrates in a way the total number of downloads which has hi=
t
100,000 in December, according to SourceForge.net statistics...
The changelog can be found at
http://spgm.sourceforge.net/?lg=3Dus&id=3Dchangelog

Merry Christmas to all of you, I wish you my best for the year to come !

Sylvain

Hello folks,

It has been 10 months since the last release of SPGM. Long time huh ? Okay,
Halloween seems to be a good occasion to announce that SPGM 1.4.3 has
finally been made available a few minutes ago...
It comes with a bunch of new features that have been asked for quite often
lately. And... oh yes ! I have changed the default flavor a little (see
http://spgm.sourceforge.net/spgm/). Hope you'll like it !
Of course, everything about this new release can be found at
http://spgm.sourceforge.net/?lg=3Dus&id=3Dchangelog .

French regards.

Sylvain

Hello everyone,

I am happy to finally get back in touch with you, so you know where
things are.

SPGM 1.4.2 (the latest version available) seems to be a really mature
revision, since no bug reports have been made during its 4-month
lifetime. Only a few changes are consequently on my TODO list for the
next packaging that should be out pretty soon. It will feature the new
Traditional Chinese language pack (thanks to Chan Pak Hing), which
brings the number of translations to an outstanding 27 (I am still
impressed about that) !

The good news is that I am currently working hard on the complete
redesign of SPGM. My developments have almost reached a level where a
beta could be made public. Be sure I will not keep it for me, since I
need your support to test it thoroughly. Some of you have already
manifested the wish to be part of the test phase, and I look forward to
getting feedback from them.

Talking about it, I would like to fire a little poll about the name I
could give to this brand new version... I have come up with 3
alternatives :
- exig (standing for EXtensible Image Gallery, because this time, it
_will_ be extensible ;)
- smig (a recursive acronym for Smig to Manage Image Galleries, the one I
like most)
- spgm 2.0 (simply)
It could even turn into a contest if you guys have some proposals ;)
Please feel free to write me back at spajot AT users DOT sourceforge DOT
net (rather than replying to the whole mailing-list) to let me know
about your thoughts.

Well, you may have understood that I am not that far from discontinuing
support of the current 1.x.x branch, so SPGM 1.4.3 could likely be its
last release.
I will tell you more about it soon.

Cheers.

Sylvain

Hello kids,

Ho ho ho... Given that you have been so nice to me this year, here comes 
SPGM 1.4.2 !
This provides two small features but they bring SPGM to another level of 
tuning. Those are EXIF support and toggle-able drop shadows surrounding 
pictures and thumbnails (see them working at 
http://spgm.sourceforge.net/spgm/index.php?spgmGal=Worlwide_shoots&spgmPic=0&spgmFilters=#pic).

You will also find the possibility to put thumbnails in a subdirectory 
from the gallery directory (I'll explain that in the FAQ very soon), and 
a few bug fixes (details can be found at 
http://spgm.sourceforge.net/?lg=us&id=changelog)

Now that Christmas is past us, let's get ready for New Year's Eve !
Cheers to all of you.

Sylvain

Hello folks,

After a while, I come back with a maintenance version of SPGM...

While still working on this brand new release you should be dying after, 
I decided to give the current layout a little brush ;)
For those who would like to see how it now looks like, there is an 
online gallery for my tests there : 
http://spgm.sourceforge.net/spgm/index.php

Here we go with the changelog...

- Change: New default theme
- Change: The special character in pic-desc.txt files has changed from 
'=' to '|'. Hyperlinks are now possible in picture captions.
- Bug fix: Permission tests are now compatible with every host policies
- Change: 1 language pack added (Slovak), thanks to Peter Chovan

As usual, to download the new package, go to http://spgm.sourceforge.net

Hope you'll like it.

Sylvain

Dear community,

I am pleased to announce that a major release of SPGM is available for 
download.

As mentionned in a previous email, it is mostly a maintenance revision 
which does not provide tons of new features. Instead, PHP3 compliance 
has been abandoned and triggered one improvement that has been expected 
for a long time: the auto-template mode. No need to tweak the 
URL_EXTRA_PARAMS constant anymore, everything is now just as simple as 
requiring spgm.php wherever in your code... Pretty useful when using a 
CMS huh ? :)

Aside from this, the package also comes with the latest bug fixes and a 
brand new Russian language pack, thanks to Alex Rayskiy.

To check it out, follow the usual link: http://spgm.sourceforge.net
Hope you'll give it a try !

Just so you know, I also keep focusing on this complete redesign I told 
you about. Things are going a bit slower than I would, but changes are 
made step by step and are -in my opinion- worth waiting...
A beta test will be started as soon as it reaches a running level. I'll 
let you know about it. Everyone who is interested in participating to 
this test is welcome to email me, by the way. More news soon...

Sylvain

   www.pajot.org

Hello everyone !

This minor bug fix release is now available.

The fixes are :
- when PopupFitPicture is disabled, controls are displayed correctly
- layout break fixed

It also includes the new Chinese simplified language pack, thanks to 
Jiandong Ruan...

If I don't get any error report within the next few weeks, I'll release 
spgm 1.4 which has no feature enhancements (search the list archive to 
understand why) but the loss of URL_EXTRA_PARAMS while using template 
mode. It will be php4 compatible only and will make the script easier to 
use...

Cheers !

Sylvain

   www.pajot.org

Hello everyone !

This minor bug fix release is now available.

The fixes are :
- when PopupFitPicture is disabled, controls are displayed correctly
- layout break fixed

It also includes the new Chinese simplified language pack, thanks to 
Jiandong Ruan...

If I don't get any error report within the next few weeks, I'll release 
spgm 1.4 which has no feature enhancements (search the list archive to 
understand why) but the loss of URL_EXTRA_PARAMS while using template 
mode. It will be php4 compatible only and will make the script easier to 
use...

Cheers !

Sylvain

   www.pajot.org

Hello folks,

First of all, I'd like to wish you a merry Christmas (a little late) and 
the best for the year to come (a little early).
Not only is this time appropriate for wishes, but it is also perfect for
presents.
So here we go ! SPGM 1.3.4 is ready for download. This is mostly a bug 
fix release because of a reason I'll explain to you right after the 
changelog :

- Slideshow mode is now toggle-able
- Picture captions are now updated while running a slideshow
- Undefined variables fixed
- Layout does not blow anymore in slideshow mode
- Javascript 'Object expected' bug fixed
- Picture captioning mechanism more user-friendly (see pic-desc.txt)
- Gallery names can be extented in a gal-title.txt file to fix issues 
related to directory names (to support accentuated characters for instance)
- Resource files renamed (gal-sort.txt, gal-desc.txt, pic-sort.txt, 
pic-desc.txt)

You can find everything about the latest release right there :
http://spgm.sourceforge.net

Now, the big news !
Well, I have been working on SPGM for a little less than 2 years and I 
have been continuously surprised about how much people liked the script. 
A look at the stats chart 
(http://sourceforge.net/project/stats/index.php?report=months&group_id=54021) 

shows the progression of downloads, and indirectly, the growth of the 
number of users. After 18 months of existence, SPGM counts 26400+ 
downloads, 120+ subscriptions to the mailing-list, 23 different 
translations and a lot of bug reports, support request, feature 
suggestions... All this makes me believe that the script fits the needs 
of many people and can still be enhanced much more (why would there be 
feature requests otherwise ?).
So what ? Let's now cut to the chase...
I decided to freeze developments towards SPGM to focus exclusively on a
brand new version of the picture gallery program. Basically, I am 
talking about SPGM v2.0, but the beast will be renamed ;) Most of the 
design has been accomplished yet, writing thousands of lines of code is 
the only thing left... This redesign aims to get rid of the limitations 
I have been through when trying to  incorporate features, while it will 
remain extremely simple to set up and manage from a user point of view.
And of course, I'll keep fixing bugs in the current script as long as
needed.

The increasing number of support requests, developments of dedicated
patches, and more recently, the amount of time spent on the redesign of 
the program made me think about running a Paypal donation tool to bring 
a little reward for this involvement. A 'donate' button has consequently 
been added to the website so people who appreciate the work and the 
resulting tool can leave a few bucks as an encouragement... A few 
donators have already contributed and I would like to particularly thank 
them through this email.

I also want to thank you all for having made the program what it is 
through your feedback... Many of your suggestions have been taken into 
account to make the next major release a mature web tool. Stay tuned... 
It'll be worth it !

Sylvain

   www.pajot.org

Hello Folks,

After a long time, I finally decided to package up the latest version of 
SPGM.
I first intended to provide users with a real support for accentuated 
characters, but I have spent too much time trying to set up an 
environment which would crash while using accentuated picture/gallery 
names. I recently understood that only Internet Explorer would make the 
script bug and the fact is that I have been using Firebird for a long 
time now, so... ;)

As "release often" is really important, I did not want to wait anymore 
to offer an improved revision of the program to you guys. You may like 
it even better now.
Anyway, those special characters will be handled later, and may be 
extended to a better localization support...

Don't wait anymore, check out the changelog at :
http://spgm.sourceforge.net/?lg=us&id=changelog

Your feedback is always welcome. Feel free to get in touch ! ;)

Sylvain

PS: don't blame me for my definition of "release often", I've been quite 
busy the last few weeks.

   www.pajot.org

Hello everyone,

Lately, SourceForge.net (which hosts SPGM) suffered "a multi-disk
failure, causing a temporary outage of project web service for projects
starting with the letters j, q, s, and y." and I haven't been able to
do what I intended to. Developments toward the script have been running
fairly well though...

Now that all services are back up and running normally, it is time for
another release, don't you think ?

SPGM 1.3.3 will correct 2 other "undefined variable" warnings that some
of you may have encountered. I hope there won't be anymore of them,
ever !
It will also be performed other code cleanups. This time, it'll be
about variable renaming so that tuning the script is even easier.
Finally, and what most of you guys are interested in, a few new
features :
- javascript slideshow support
- picture comments will be stored in one single file for more
convenience
- pop-up frames will be able to fit dimensions of the picture they're
actually showing
- toggle-able display of the picture basename in the thumbnail and the
picture areas (as many people name their picture according to the title
they would give them)
- real support for accentuated characters

For what I think, this new version should be available in 2-3 weeks
from now.
I'll let you know through this mailing-list anyway

Cheers,

Sylvain

   www.pajot.org



-- 
Sylvain

   www.pajot.org

Hello everybody,

I am happy to anounce that SPGM 1.3.2 has been released just a few 
minutes ago...

To make it short, there are 4 important points (hey, that's a lot ;) :
- support for pop-up pictures has been added
- SPGM now generates XHTML 1.0 Strict compliant code
- the standalone mode has been removed (a default template is of course 
provided)
- considerable code cleanups have been performed for a noticeable 
performance improvement (at least on my computer)

As usual, you will find the complete changelog there:
http://spgm.sourceforge.net/?lg=us&id=changelog

Posted on SourceForge and Freshmeat:
"
SPGM has been performed important code cleanups resulting in performance 
improvements and better readability.
This release introduce the major changes that are conducted until v1.4.0 
comes out, by also including the pop-up picture support and XHTML 1.0 
Strict compliance.
"

Yes I am now massively focusing on SPGM 1.4 and I work hard to complete 
my objectives as for v1.3.x
I still have many ideas (thanks to your feedback) and I really am 
excited about setting them up. The next release shouldn't take too long :)
Have fun with this brand new version !

Sylvain

   www.pajot.org

Hello guys,

This release includes 2 very important features (support for 
non-standalone mode and gallery-dedicated thumbnails) and a complete 
re-write of the filter system.
See changelog for more details:
http://spgm.sourceforge.net/?lg=us&id=changelog

Have fun with this easier-to-use revision ;)

Sylvain

   www.pajot.org

Hello guys,

This release includes 2 very important features (support for *true* 
non-standalone mode and gallery-dedicated thumbnails) and a complete 
re-write of the filter system.
See changelog for more details:
http://spgm.sourceforge.net/?lg=us&id=changelog 
<http://spgm.sourceforge.net/?lg=us&id=changelog>
Everybody should upgrade their package to take advantage of those 
improvements as well as bug fixes, and because a few things have been 
deprecated.
Have a good week-end !

Sylvain

Hi everybody !

Just a little note so you know that I finally put a list of the 
available plug-ins/modules that users have written so far...
http://spgm.sourceforge.net/?lg=us&id=modules
... Check it out !

Sylvain

Hello everyone,

Like I promised in my last email, here are my plans for the next releases...

I am gonna keep improving the actual script (code clean-ups, 
improvements, comments... and maybe some new features) for a few minor 
releases, while preserving PHP3 compatibility. PHP3-compliant SPGM will 
then remain in 1.3.x .

Once the script reaches a high level of maturity, it will switch to 1.4 
which is the start point to full PHP4 compliance, and the end of 1.3.x 
development. It will come with features that weren't allowed before 
(EXIF support, better integration within webpages [no more header/footer 
files]...) and it will keep evolving from 1.4.x to 1.9.x at most... 
Besides developping the script, I'll begin to write add-ons to make SPGM 
very useful and user-friendly. I have already thought about comment 
assessment functionnalities for visitors, "mail this picture to a 
friend" facilities, maybe statistic tools. And most of all... An 
administrative interface ! It will allow to upload pictures, generate 
thumbnails, assess captions and so on...
Note that all those tools will be packaged in separate modules, not in 
the script itself, whose scope is clearly defined...

... And then 2.0 !! Well, this is a very important project to me... Some 
of you already know it, my goals include the use of W3C standards and 
tools (http://www.w3c.org). I would like SPGM to turn to an XML'ed 
picture gallery generator. As XML and XSLT (a language for transforming 
XML documents) gets more and more supported by browers, make the use of 
such technologies would give the script much more extensibility, 
specially because XSLT is the perfect way to generate templates for your 
galleries...

I have no idea regarding release dates, this is just an announcement 
about future SPGM's milestones. It will depend on my disponibilities and 
involvement, 'cause I am now done with my studies (yeah !) and I have 
other stuff to take care of...
Anyways, your requests are always welcomed.
Hope you are as confident as I am about my ideas ;)

Sylvain

Hi there,

Just FYI (I know most of you guys don't need it):
http://spgm.sourceforge.net/?lg=us&id=faqs

Furthermore, I'll let you know about my future plans as for SPGM in the 
next email.

Have a good night, tomorrow will be the beginning of another week :)

Sylvain

Hi everyone,

I am pleased to announce that the latter release of SPGM (1.3) is now 
available.
As I mentionned earlier, this new package includes several new features 
that makes the script more interesting than it has ever been. Moreover, 
I fixed a bottleneck which makes the gallery introspection and rendering 
quicker.
Code improvements and several new core features... Isn't that great news 
?? ;)
Hope you'll like it !

Sylvain

-- ChangeLog --

02-23-2003: v1.3
- Feature added: new picture highlighting can now be disabled
- Feature added: introduction of thumbnail-sized gallery icons for 
graphically
  improved gallery listing (themes designer have to add one more icon)
- Feature added: you can now set the number of displayed columns within 
gallery
  listings
- Feature added: ability to display pictures without the thumbnail 
navigation
  bar
- Feature added: picture information display (right below the 
thumbnails) can
  now be disabled
- Feature added: pictures can now be sorted against creation date 
(WARNING: the
  name of the text file used to explicitely sort pictures has changed: 
picture.sort)
- Feature added: galleries can now be explicitely sorted using the same
  principles than pictures (i.e. against filenames, creation date or
  explicitely sorted using a simple text file: gallery.sort)
- Feature added: introduction of two sort options (available for both 
galleries
  and pictures): ascending or descending. Those are not available when 
explicit
  sort is used.
- Bug fix: thumbnails' width-height ratio is now correctly preserved for
  thumbnailed galleries
- Bug fix: width and height attributes for the img tag are now declared 
as to
  gallery icons
- Bug fix: while browsing new pictures, switching between pages now 
keeps the
  filter status to 'new'
- Bug fix: only directories possibly return true from is_gallery.
- Bug fix: classes are now CSS 2.0 compliant
- Code improvements
- Introduction of a new class for the wrapper table ("table_wrapper")
- Danish and Hungarian language packs added
- Default theme has been updated to make it more attractive

Hello there,

Here are my plans for the next release of SPGM, which should by out in 
3/4 weeks from now...
As for new features:
- ability to set the number of columns to display the gallery listing in 
(for now, all galleries are listed in one single column)
- galleries will be iconified using two icons (a mini-icon and and a 
thumbnail-sized one). This is to represent galleries amongst thumbnailed 
galleries better. Note that spgm.thm will therefore include 1 new class...
- ability to display pictures without the thumbnail navigation bar 
(users will click on the above link to the gallery to go back to the thumbs)
- ascending/descending sort options for default sort (upon creation date)
- explicit gallery sort against a text file

A FAQ may be put online as well, now that I have collected many 
questions which are often asked.
And to finish... a few bug fixes... You guessed allright ! :)
Have a good week-end.

Sylvain

Hello everyone,

Just a little note to let you know that a bug (noticeable on some server 
configurations) has been fixed. Its consequence is to always display the 
"unknown picture" error message.
Everyone who encountered this issue should update the package...
Have a good week-end !

Sylvain

Hello guys,

Yes, after having been unavailable for a while, I took a little time to 
release another version of SPGM.
Two important features have been added and they do justify - in my sense 
- to shift to 1.2: the possibility to explicitely sort pictures withing 
galleries against a text file (one picture filename per line) and 
finally, gallery icons can be replaced by random thumbnails if desired.
Apart from those, a few bugs have been fixed, as usual :)
I would also like to notify that many language packs have been added and 
that some of the features that are now in the script came up in users' 
mind, not mine. So I take advantage of this occasion to sincerely thank 
all of the people who gave their contribution in any way...

Happy new year to all of you !!

Sylvain

SPGM is great!! There is only one change i would like to make. I would 
like the pictures to show up on there own page without the thumbnails. 
I have noticed there is some code for this in the script that is 
commented out. I have tried uncommenting but it doesn't work. Can 
anyone help me with this. Thank You Very Much in advance.

Cal

Hi everyone,

Yes, I am a little late regarding SPGM development because of a personal 
problem. Therefore, the new release is differed to an unknown date.
Sorry about that, guys...

Sylvain