> 1. In what way would the HTML be NOT hardcoded? Are you referring to the > possibility of using a selection of templates or some other such method > of producing unique pages from a single HTML generation programme?
Yes. At the absolute utter minimum, I would expect a separate .css style file, and CSS being used extensively. That way I can fix up the look of the album by replacing just one file, and it's a file I only need to develop once. Pity none of the album generators support that. As a next step, I'd like to see a selection of designs on offer. Look at a word processor, web site design package, whatever, there's some basic variety included. If I was writing the program, I'd make a directory per design, and fill it up with files containing HTML fragments and placeholders, and any graphics files used. Placeholders (a.k.a. fixed strings) are replaced with values when the album is created. You need rather a lot of these variables if you want to be flexible, e.g. size of thumbnails, a few colours, and file names of course. I started on a script using this approach many years ago, but never made it to a releasable state. None of the album generators offer this kind of functionality. Actually there was one which may have started in the direction of being customisable, but the license requires a w**k on each page, so it went to /dev/null. (The author doesn't respond to financial offers in return for an acceptable license either, so it stays in /dev/null.) All in all it's looking not too good, this kind of software has some way to go. Did you have a look at the filenames digikam generates? Functional, but not good. Hence my mark of "lousy" for its HTML. It's nicely integrated though. Note I didn't say digikam is lousy, only its HTML (dito for any other program AFAICT). In any case, whatever you choose for organising your photos, do some very long and damn good testing, and see if it works with 10000 photos as well after you thought it'll be fine with 100. Albums are not the most important part here... (I use a scripted setup for organisation btw.) > 2. Although the answer to this may touch on your answer above, what > form/s of extensibility do you regard as desirable in an HTML generator? Extensible *albums* :) Invariably you're going to find that you want to add some more photos to an existing album. Well, you're not, until you find a program which can do it. You can recreate the lot from scratch though... Volker -- Volker Kuhlmann is list0570 with the domain in header http://volker.dnsalias.net/ Please do not CC list postings to me.
