[Imc-drupal-dev] working on developing a indymedia drupal distro response

[Robbt]

I've responded to everything below.
In terms of contributing to the drupal
community. I did a huge test of every module
shortly before 4.7 came out to see which ones
within CVS had been upgraded to be compatible
with 4.7 and which ones still need FormsAPI
update. Check it out at
http://drupal.org/node/59396

> anyone know the people
> behind www.ourmedia.org? They seem to have a lot
> of Drupal experience.
> Maybe it's interesting to hear about their
> findings, or even ask them if
> they want to be involved?

I know someone who was working on Ourmedia.org,
he has expressed interest in Indymedia here in
town but seems to be too busy. I will contact
him, but here is where their development takes
place.
http://www.ourmediatools.org

I actually use Ourmedia to do all of the hosting
for the video/audio for our site because we
don't really have our own server here in
Columbus Indymedia.

> Modules:
>
> - CCK is definitely worth following. We're using
> flexinode at the
> moment, and it does have its drawbacks. One
> question I have: would it be
> best to go for CCK content types for text,
> audio, video, photos, or
> would specific modules be more useful (for
> example the video.module, or
> the image.module)? Or maybe a combination of
> both?

The multimedia aspect of CCK is definently
lacking from what I can tell. The way they are
planning on dealing with files is still simply
based upon an upload attachment. The code isn't
done for the image field yet either, last I
checked. But CCK does have a lot potential.


> - I'm planning to look into the video module,
> once that's ready for 4.7.
> The video.module developers have been working
> hard on this one, eg. on
> making it possible to upload video's as a
> seperate content type (instead
> of linking to a video file after it was already
> uploaded). With this
> module, it's possible to play your videos
> 'inside' your website, instead
> of watching them in a new browser window (see
> http://www.windsmpeg.altervista.org/video-demo/
> for an example). The
> module supports Quicktime, WMV, Flash, Real. The
> new version would
> include support for mpeg as well. Has anyone
> used/tested this one before?

I've used Video.module extensively. It works and
there is a CVS version that works with 4.7.
I don't know how I feel about it, I'm kind of
indifferent. It doesn't provide any terms of
controls for the video and many times it will
just open it up in a new screen or external
program anyways. Ourmedia.org has a nice
integrated player, I wish they would share the
code, it also handles a lot more filetypes.

This brings up a question of codecs and the
like, which I've been wrangling with but I'm
going to save that post for IMC-Video.


> - Views is indeed very interesting. Combined
> with the extra
> block-regions in 4.7, this is very powerful.

Yeah I experimented with this for a while, until
I realized the views module was under such heavy
development that it shouldn't be used in a
production site at all. But a newswires layout
done completely without any kind of custom
coding similar to indymedia.be or
sf.indymedia.org will be possible with this, not
to mention lots of other stuff.

> - What about the Acidfree module? Has anyone
> used this or another module
> to create media galleries?

I've used Acidfree, and in many ways it's
superior to the normal gallery, and I've thought
of using it for the Cbusimc.org site, but I
haven't used it yet because it is kind of a
parralel development process and doesn't
integrate with the image.module way we've done
things before. It's not so much that its a break
but there is also the Shazam Gallery, which
preports to do similar things. The main problem
I have with images right now is there is no easy
way to upload a lot of files for the normal
user, leaving them to utilize tools like Flickr
or Photobucket and then posting links rather
than using the site to host their photos. I'd
like to see an opensource free way within drupal
to upload a bunch. This is a option within
Acidfree where it can decipher a zip module. It
has some pros and cons. I'd like to look into it
more. The developer of it is a software
developer for IBM so it's a pretty well coded
project. I haven't tried out the video files
aspect of it but it seems to be orientated
towards short video clips by digital cameras not
actual video.




> An IRC meeting would be good I think, to find
> out what people think,
> what are their experiences, etc. Should we start
> a group on
> groups.drupal.org ?
>

I sent them a message about creating a group on
groups.drupal.org after I registered I didn't
see a link to create a group. So we can try and
get one listed. I'll e-mail the list if they
create it.

As far as a IRC meeting. I'm game. What is the
best days/times for people ? I think with all of
the varying timezones and schedules it might be
hard to agree on one. But anytime during the day
Eastern standard time would work best for me,
and that might correspond with evenings
schedules of other people in europe or what not.

Later,
  Robb