
ECLiPt Virtual Gallery Creator
------------------------------


EVG addresses the needs of people who want to put photo galleries on their
web pages. Most photo galleries on the Web are rather rude - EVG automatically
generates nice index pages and hyperlinked per-image-pages. Thumbnails
are generated automatically, as well as adding or removing images is easy.

THIS FILE IS VERY SHORT! PLEASE READ IT!

To get an impression of what this program does look at
http://www.edu.uni-klu.ac.at/~epirker/gallery/usafeb99/

- What does EVG do?

It assumes you have a collection of digital images ready, all "standard-sized",
i.e. somewhat around 600 to 800 pixels in width and somewhat around 400 to 600
pixels in height. EVG automatically creates thumbnails (20% size) and lowres
images (50%) by using ImageMagick. If you have very high-resolution images
(e.g. if you order a Picture CD for your photos, you'll get something like 
1500x1100), you can use kodak mode, which generates the standard size images for
you (and thumbnails and lowres, of course).



- Installation

What is needed for EVG:
  * Python >= 1.5 to execute the EVG program
  * ImageMagick (the 'convert' utility) to create thumbnails
  * An image-viewer (ee or xv) for interactive editing of image descriptions

1. Edit the file 'evg' and make sure that
   * the path in the first line to the Python interpreter is correct
   * VIEWERCMD must be the name of an installed viewer application
     The default is ee (Electric Eyes), you can easily substitute it for xv,
     if you have it installed, or any other similar viewer.
   * CONVERTCMD must be the pathname of ImageMagick's convert utility

If you are root on your machine and want to install it for everybody: 

2. Copy eclipthtml.py in the /usr/lib/python1.5/site-packages dir.
   (or whereever you have your Python stuff residing)
3. Copy evg to /usr/local/bin or wherever you want it.


- Create a picture gallery

1. Create a directory and copy your images there
2. Execute
   evg.py *
3. Answer all the questions (Image Descriptions, Name of image series, etc.)
    Notes: 
     - For Introduction Image, use your first picture or some symbol or
       whatever which then appears on the Series' index page)
     - After the questioning, thumbnails are generated. This may take some
       time, depending on image number and size and processing power.

Done! Upload to your webserver or view the directory with a browser!

Tip: Don't delete serdb and picdb files. If you want to change something in 
your gallery, you won't have to answer all the questions again. You can edit
these files in your favourite text editor.

- Other usage information (FAQ)

  Q: How to add a picture?
  A: Just copy it to the directory, open the file picdb with your favourite
     text editor, and add your file in the same format the others are stored.
     Remove the thumbnail directory (rm -rf thumbnails).
     Then re-run evg.py. No questions are to answer this time...

  Q: How to remove a picture?
  A: Remove it from the directory and thumbnail directory. Then open picdb
     with your text editor and remove the entry of your filename.

  Q: How to change order of pictures?
  A: Ordering is done via filenames, respectively the way command-line 
     parameters are given to evg.py. You can also rename pictures, but then
     you will have to reflect these changes in picdb.

  Q: I made a typing error. I don't want to answer all the questions again.
  A: Edit picdb or serdb with your favorite text editor and re-run evg.py.

  Q: Is there a GNOME/KDE or whatever GUI frontend?
  A: Not yet usable. Joseph A. Martin <martinja@ice-works.com> has begun
     with one, I don't know the current status. 

  Q: The program doesn't do as I want.
  A: Well, either you have misused it, or you want too much, or the program
     is buggy. That's life! If you got a bug, please send me a patch.


- Copyright information and limited warranty

EVG is distributed under the GNU General Public Licence (GPL) Version 2. It
is (c) 1999 by Emanuel Pirker <epirker@edu.uni-klu.ac.at>. However, some 
parts of the HTML-creating engine are (c) 1998 by Martin Preishuber 
<mpreishu@edu.uni-klu.ac.at>. See the file COPYING for licence details.
I also want to express that the copyright holders are NOT responsible for 
ANYTHING the program does or does not.
