Photo Viewer (pv)

pv is a script used to share photo collectios over the Internet.

It is meant to be used where one has direct access to a web server and
want an easy way to share photos.

I have been using this tool to manage my own photo collection for
close to five years.

Feature Overview

pv sports the following features:

• Does not need (make use) of a database. All meta data stored on flat
  files in the file system.
• Bi-Lingual (English and Spanish)
• Photos stored in the filesystem in original form. Web friendly views
  and thumbnails generated on the fly.
• reasonably optimised. Can use SpeedyCGI for persistent perl
  interpreters. Also pictures are reformatted for reasonable web
  browsing speeds. Generated pictures are cached.

The main idea of pv is that users will keep all their pictures in
their file system, and pv will on-the-fly generate web friendly
views of their collection. This is why pv does not feature
any interface to upload photos.

Requirements

The following components are required for pv to function:

• A reasonable UNIX environment.
• A web server with a CGI interface.
• A way for you to access the file-system of the published web
  pages. (This is to upload pages).
• A perl5 interpreter.
• libjpeg for manipulating JPG files.
• netpbm for creating PNG thumbnails.

For viewing:

• A web browser with supporting frames.

Also the following Perl modules are used:

• CGI
• HTML::Entities
• Digest::MD5
• File::Basename
• Socket

These are usually included in most installations.

Optionally, you may choose to install the
[[http://search.cpan.org|CPAN]] module for
[[http://search.cpan.org/dist/CGI-SpeedyCGI/|SpeedyCGI]].

Installation

Installation of pv should be straight forward.

• Download a current pv distribution from
  http://pv0.sourceforge.net/.
• untar the contents to a temporary directory.
• Copy the directory pv-dat (and its contents) to your document
  root.
• Upload your photos to the web server. Make sure that all files and
  directories are owned by the user that runs the web server.
• Modify pv configuration settings (located at the beginning of
  the script) to suit your local preferences.
• Copy the modified pv script to the cgi-bin directory of your
  web server.
• Point your web browser to the pv cgi location.
• Enjoy...

The following settings must be customised/configured:

• $fpath
  Points to the location in the file-system where your photo
  collection is stored.
• $cachedir
  This is where we store temporary files. Usually scaled down versions
  of the different photos.
• $furl
  Points to the URL path where the photo collection is stored.
• $home
  URL for your home page link.
• $icon_url
• $css_url
  URL path to where the pv-dat directory was copied to.
• $icon_path
  file system path to where the pv-dat directory was copied to.
• %admin_net
  IP networks that are allow to modify the photo colleciton.

The following settings are customisable:

• $dft_lang
  Default language
• %sup_langs
  Supported languages
• $cols
• $rows
  Number of pictures accross and down of thumbnail pictures in over
  views.
• $delay
  Number of seconds to delay during slide shows.
• @title
  Title to display
• $prologue
• $epilogue
  This is always sent at the beginning and the end of each HTML
  page. You can use this to customise the look and feel of the web
  application.

Using PV

Using pv should be quite straight forward. Point your browser to
the pv cgi-bin URL and it should show a folder navigation tree on
the left frame and the contents of the currrent folder on the right
frame.

Clicking on the links on the left frame will open the respective
folders. At the bottom of the tree you will see a home icon (which
should bring you to your home page) and if in one of the trusted IP
address an Edit link. This should switch to editing mode.

On the right frame you should see either thumbnails or actual
pictures. Clicking on a thumbnail should switch to a picture
view. Clicking on the picture during picture view will allow you to
download the full resolution (original) version of the picture.

Edit Mode

Clicking on the Edit link on the left frame will turn-on edit
mode. In this mode the left hand frame will show two or three more
icons next to open folders. These icons will allow you to:

• Change folder names, titles and subtitles in the supported
  languages.
• Create new folders.
• Delete empty folders. If there are files on a folder, you will
  not see this icon.

on the right frame, the thumbail view will allow you to:

• Delete photos
• Rotate left/right (these are JPEG lossless transformations).
• Move pictures to different folders.

Clicking on a picture will allow you to view it. In this mode you may:

• Change the image name.
• Create a caption in any of the supported languages.
• Move or delete.

License

pv is Copyright (C) 2003-2008 Alejandro Liu Ly

pv is released under the GNU General Public License.

pv is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.

pv is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT
ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY
or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public
License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/