Re: Categories

["James Purchase" <jpurch@interlog.com>]

Roger

>The only catch is that the entry form has
>to require the information that we'll need to categorize the entries,
>should categories be needed.

Not necessarily. It's more a matter of grunt work on someone's part.Let me
explain (and I promise not to launch into yet another disertation on my
philosophy of life in a wormhole... <g>)

When the entries come in, they are scanned and the resulting files are
placed into a series of directories (or a single directory, if the number is
under 100) on Erik's hard drive. There are many software programs, some of
them shareware and very inexpensive - and since Erik runs Linux, they would
more than likely be free, due to the spirit of the group of people who
gravitate to that OS, which will scan a directory full of graphic files and
produce both catalogues and thumbnails (i.e. small versions of the image).
If each image is given a separate and unique ID number as it is saved to the
hard drive, and that unique ID number is cross referenced to the entrant's
tombstone data in a separate database or speadsheet file, we can sort the
images after the fact, based upon the thumbnails. The person doing the
sorting need not be Erik - all it requires is viewing access to the
thumbnails as they are each identified by a similar/related/identical ID
number as the original image.

The "sorter" decides which category each image logically falls into (this
wouldn't work for a "size" sorting as all of the thumbnails would be the
same size), and just records the ID numbers on a piece of paper. This
information then gets sent to Erik who spends a rainy afternoon (and given
his location, I'm sure there are a _few_) physically moving the original
files into separate sub-directories, each one for a separate category. In
this way, each subdirectory would contain multiple images, depending upon
the submissions received, which were all related via the Category. The
judges don't need to know who's images they are, just the ID numbers. We can
associate everything later - it should be a simple query of a database, no
advanced SQL required.

James Purchase
toronto


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