plg wrote:

1) why is version 3.0.38 while it's the first one we see? I see there is a first version 2.10 (not released) then many more (none released)

I built this application originally just for myself as I wanted my family members to be able to contribute to the photo website by modifying the photo titles on my server and even make album moves to organize a set of photos that originally came from a highly unorganized set of 5000+ 38mm slides.  I consider the Piwigo server to be a place of collaboration.  As such, I ended up wanting to update filenames and even metadata to match any contributions.

Just recently, I decided to share the plugin thinking perhaps others might use Piwigo in the same way?

plg wrote:

2) do you confirm it only applies to synched photos (the ones in "galleries", not in "upload")?

Yes, it only acts on galleries files, not on upload managed files.

Further, for safety, it only acts on specific triggers around administrative changes including:

* album rename and re-ordering
* photo title/description edits
* and -- it also acts on "Physical Photo Move" plugin actions -- including a correction for physical album move where I check and move any stranded pwg_format files (where the plugin currently only moves canonical files)

The plugin purposely does not run against mass imports through Synchronize.  Instead, I added a Global Update Tool which can be used following any Synchronize action.  The Global Update Tool does a safe bulk renaming but forces user to do a Preview first and approve the intened changes.

plg wrote:

3) why using Python?

I built this in collaboration with ChatGPT for coding and I appreciate the fact that the python code is published with the plugin so that it can be inspected.  I've spent much of my time designing and redesign for high performance and am happy with the current results.  On my home web server, i can scan through a photo collection of 5000+ in under 60 seconds applying check for renaming and checking for stale metadata.

plg wrote:

4) is __pycache__ necessary?

No, that will be removed with my next version.

plg wrote:

5) why is the design (especially the tags look&feel) not the Piwigo administration design? (that's a pattern I see in all AI-generated plugins)

Yes, it is AI-generated via ChatGPT.  It started out looking quite like other admin pages, but I found the dark background on the text input was making it difficult for me to read tags in various fields -- and so I change the look as I like it thinking the plugin was for my personal use only.  I don't mind doing another version or variant that brings it into compliance if that is highly important to the community.

plg wrote:

6) isn't the plugin managed on a git repository somewhere?

Not at the moment.  I have no problem setting that up soon.. but just wanted to share and see if it was useful to anyone before I did too much further. If there is interested in extending/changing this plugin, for sure will be glad to get it to a repository.

plg wrote:

7) Is this an old plugin that is only being released now?

Not really, don't consider it old.  I built this in the last 3 weeks.

Version 1.0+ focused on automated physical file renaming (week 1)

Version 2.0+ focused on metadata syncing (week 2)

Version 3.0+ this week - focused on folder renaming and adding a smarter engine that can run in parallel to the GUI until a rename job is completely.  In my case, all my rename jobs finish in under a second, so this wasn't needed.  But I added this mechanism in case people use the tool to do more advanced renaming or metadata syncs that run slower than how I'm using the tool.

It was around the third week that I decided for all the time I spent making it work the way I liked, .. perhaps I should socialize it and see if anyone else sees value in it.  So.. it's the first "public" release as until now I've just been using it on my own personal server.

cschafer wrote:

plg wrote:

1) why is version 3.0.38 while it's the first one we see? I see there is a first version 2.10 (not released) then many more (none released)
[...]

7) Is this an old plugin that is only being released now?

I built this application originally just for myself [...] I decided to share the plugin thinking perhaps others might use Piwigo in the same way?

Very good reasons. That's often how users start contributing to Piwigo with their custom plugins.

cschafer wrote:

Not really, don't consider it old.  I built this in the last 3 weeks.

Version 1.0+ focused on automated physical file renaming (week 1)

Version 2.0+ focused on metadata syncing (week 2)

Version 3.0+ this week - focused on folder renaming and adding a smarter engine [...]

OK, very young plugin actually. Considering the version numbers starting with 2.10, I though it was started in 2019 with Piwigo 2.10.

And why jumping from 3.0.38 to 3.0.55. Users are going to wonder where are all the in-between version :-/

cschafer wrote:

plg wrote:

2) do you confirm it only applies to synched photos (the ones in "galleries", not in "upload")?

Yes, it only acts on galleries files, not on upload managed files.

Good. It would be a very big bug if it was changing the filename pattern for upload/**/* files

cschafer wrote:

plg wrote:

6) isn't the plugin managed on a git repository somewhere?

Not at the moment.  I have no problem setting that up soon.. but just wanted to share and see if it was useful to anyone before I did too much further. If there is interested in extending/changing this plugin, for sure will be glad to get it to a repository.

As an opensource piece of code, a public repository is highly expected and appreciated. Personnaly I don't even understand how you can work without one :-)

The Piwigo.org extension manager is designed to work with a repository for each extension. It will directly build your zip file each time you want to publish a new version.

Ok, with new version 3.2, I've taken the time to attempt to better align with the common piwigo look and feel and killed off the python scripting (getting a performance boost as a result).