Photo Catalog-Re Ordering Photos with captions

[Sannyasin Sivakatirswami]

I am about to port a SuperCard project to Revolution that has evolved 
over about 6 years... basically it imports photos (limit of 42 at the 
moment), allows the user to write captions. Then generates an HTML 
chunk, with the photos one after another in the order they appear in 
the SuperCard Window which is a giant scrolling window that scroll up 
and down vertically, photos on left, captions on the right, with 42 
images objects and 42 caption boxes. There are lots of ancillary 
widgets for including audio, banners, transcripts etc. . Once the chunk 
is built the whole final build and deployment to our site(s), 
archiving, FTP, build of final index.shmtl doc etc is done in 
Revolution.  (see www.gurudeva.org for the daily output entirely done 
with xTalk tools )

All this is pretty straight forward with one exception. re-ordering the 
photos. the work flow now involves a pre load process in iView media 
where photos are ordered and rename and then imported in ordinal 
sequence according to the order of  the day. But frequently there is a 
need to re-order the photos after the fact. Right now I use a lame but 
workable system where a  list of photos is maintained in a text field 
and the "distribution" of the photos through the 42 image objects is 
from this list. so, using option key and shift keys one can re-order 
the lines in the list and then invoke and update to the 42 image 
objects. If captions were involved then there is a laborious process to 
move the captions around to match the new order of the photos.

I am thinking now to create a group of one image control and one 
caption, then on importing a series of photos, dynamically clone the 
group, apply the filename to the newly create image in the next group  
"step and repeat" these left to right with a 370 pixel offset (maximum 
width of any photo is 350 pixels). so far, so good (have yet to 
actually do it though) then the HTML output would look to the layer 
property to chose the order of the photos to write out the code. OK, so 
far that still seems good.

But now, if I want to re-order the photos... what is the best strategy? 
Implement a drag and drop? let's say the photo and its caption which is 
5th in the sequence left to right needs to move to position 2, I 
suppose we could drag it and some how drop it between the existing 1 & 
2 and via some algorithm, move all the photos to the right by one 
increment of 370 pixels and reset the layers for everyone... not 
trivial... Or perhaps my original plan was better, keep a list in a 
palette window that the use can re-order which dynamically re-assigns 
file names to the image controls, which will keep there ordinal layer 
position. Problem is, that's not intuitive... file names look like 
"1-2-04_01.jpg" and its much more obvious to drag and drop the actual 
photo you see you want to move.

If I can get this working we can take a subset of the functions and 
deploy these also as a means for collaborators offshore to send in 
thumbnails. Particularly useful for Hinduism Today editorial where a 
reporter in Delhi could send us 20 photos with captions, we choose the 
best and he ships the hi-res version of those selected for the article. 
But i always hit a wall on this re-ordering business.

Any thoughts?


Sannyasin Sivakatirswami
Himalayan Academy Publications
at Kauai's Hindu Monastery
katir at hindu.org

www.HimalayanAcademy.com,
www.HinduismToday.com
www.Gurudeva.org
www.Hindu.org