Thumbcat
Image Catalogue Application
2 Structure
Thumbcat organises images in a hierarchy of:
Catalogue - A list of folders/albums equivelent to a tree of directories.
Album - A list of images equivelent to a directory of files
Image - A bitmap, vector or video image
The contents of an album can be made up of images in any of the following four methods :
- A one-to-one relation between a file in a directory and an image in
an album. In this case any action performed on the album image is also
done on the file in the directory i.e. move,copy and delete, unless the
RISCOS directory is read-only.
- A view which is the users collection of images from multiple albums. In this
case the album/view is a collection of pointers to images and so images
moved. copied or deleted from a view do not affect the original image.
- A view which is a collection of images as the result of a search. This is
identical to the previous case except that the choice of images in this view
are the result of a database search.
- An arbitrary collection of images. This is similar to a view except that
the original images can be from any filer directory. This type of
album/view is prone to missing images since the originals are not recognised
by Thumbcat as being part of an album/catalogue.
Catalogue files hold the database information about images. These can
be located in the same location as the images or remote from the images.
Typically a read/write catalogue is local and a read-only is remote (it has
to be). Every catalogue has some basic information held in a pseudo
application or "catalogue descriptor".
This structure is applied even to images and directories for immediate
viewing. In these cases a catalogue is built in scrap. It is this building
of a scrap based catalogue that gives the impression that Thumbcat is slow
to display sprites and drawfiles in immediate mode. However, once a catalogue has been built
the copy, moving and referencing is very responsive since all the relevant
files and thumbnails have been built.
Thumbcat creates the following files and folders:
!ThumbcatO
This is the options file and is embedded in the catalogue descriptor
application. It contains the options selected by the user when creating a
catalogue.
!ThumbcatI
This is the album list file and is located in the
catalogue descriptor application. It contains a line for every album
showing the short (RiscOS) name, long name, level, image qty and image
sizes.
!ThumbcatC
This is the data file. It is located in the catalogue
descriptor application for remote catalogues or in the same directory as the
images for a local catalogue.
Thumbs
This is a directory that contains all the thumbnails and is
located in the catalogue descriptor application for remote catalogues or in
the same directory as the images for a local catalogue.
l<image>
This is the name applied to the large , detail
view thumbnail, where "<image>" is the original image name
s<image>
This is the name
applied to the small, album view thumbnail,where "<image>" is the original image name
2.1 Book Styles
Thumbcat allows for user definable book styles.
These are all stored in :
!Thumbcat.Resources.Book
A book is made up of border sprites that are stored in a folder called "Finish"
and spine sprites stored in a folder called "Binding". New finishes and bindings
can be created and stored in these folders and Thumbcat will pick them up
for selection in the Options window.
All icons are 256 colours and 24
pixels square.
Further details can be found in the Chapter : Developer Notes.
2.2 CD Styles
Thumbcat also allows for user definable CD player buttons
for the detail window. These are stored in the folder called "Player".
Again these are all 256 colours and 24 pixels square.
2.3 User Specific Details
User specific details are held in the choices directory "<Choices$Dir>.Thumbcat". This
holds the following information :
- List of known catalogues
- Options
- List of tags to be displayed in the short list
- Defined views
- Defined searches