[Clipart] openclipart 3.2, bugs, features and changelogs

[Jakub Jankiewicz]

Hi shirish

On Thu, 15 Mar 2012 01:44:40 +0530
shirish शिरीष <shirishag75 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi all,
> An old bee/user of openclipart ( at least since 2k8 and a bit before).
> Please CC me if somebody comments as I have turned off mail from the
> mailing list (as I tend to get much mail and hence have been avoiding
> to spill under the information overload).  For quite sometime I didn't
> see any new release within distributions and hence thought that
> everybody had gone home or something. I did use to come to the site
> and see some new clipart but more of a desktop person than a browser
> kinda person.

OCAL it's more like community of artist that use the site to connect
create remix and share clipart and other users that may use that work.

And generally there is more focus on the site and creating of packages
was dropped.

> 
> Finally though, there was a release today in Debian and came to know
> you guys are still good and around :)

I didn't know about Debian packages don't know which version of ocal it
use, if they download all new clipart or what.

> 
> $ aptitude show openclipart-png
> Package: openclipart-png
> State: installed
> Automatically installed: yes
> Version: 2.0-1
> Priority: extra
> Section: graphics
> Maintainer: Martin Kelly <aomighty at gmail.com>
> Uncompressed Size: 655 M
> Suggests: gimp
> Conflicts: openclipart (< 0.10+dfsg-3)
> Description: clip art in PNG format
> The Open Clip Art Library is a collection of 100% license-free,
> royalty-free, and restriction-free art that you can use for any
> purpose.
> 
>  This package contains the images in Portable Network Graphics (PNG)
> format. Homepage: http://www.openclipart.org

Shit, another www site, we need to get rid of this url, the proper url
is http://openclipart.org

> 
> Tags: made-of::icons, role::app-data
> 
> $ aptitude show openclipart-png=0.18+dfsg-12
> Package: openclipart-png
> State: not installed
> Automatically installed: yes
> Version: 0.18+dfsg-12
> Priority: extra
> Section: graphics
> Maintainer: Debian QA Group <packages at qa.debian.org>
> Uncompressed Size: 203 M
> Suggests: gimp
> Conflicts: openclipart (< 0.10+dfsg-3)
> Description: clip art in PNG format
>  The Open Clip Art Library is a collection of 100% license-free,
> royalty-free, and restriction-free art that you can use for any
> purpose.
> 
> This package contains the images in Portable Network Graphics (PNG)
> format. Homepage: http://www.openclipart.org
> 
> Tags: made-of::icons, role::app-data
> 
> As can be seen the packages have tripled in size and there I see a
> problem. There is no way for a user as far I can tell to know which
> images are new and which images are from the previous release.

this is not the OCAL problem but debian package that use clipart from
OCAL one if you want to know which one is new create a program that will
show new clipart

> 
> what I mean is, while OCAL (openclipart library) is and can be used
> almost anywhere, MOST (not all) people might use it to spice their
> presentations.
> 
> And therein lies number of problems. Now most of them are about a
> release around a year or two old so might or might not be relevant.
> 
> a. There is no browser :- While I could use some third-party image
> browser like eog or/and something else it is difficult to traverse.
> While in the short-term I don't think you guys could afford to think
> of some sort of browser or something but maybe something to think
> about in the medium term. I am thinking something which is specific to
> openclipart and the cliparts within (maybe it could be used to see
> comments if you are online or/and give feedback or something from
> within the image browser interface without using a real browser as
> well as connecting or/and learning something about the artist as well
> - his motivations and contact details perhaps .) Maybe people can look
> at opengameart.org and sort of collaborate and see if something can be
> spinned, don't know just an idea.

if you don't like to use the browser write "ocal image viewer" using our
API, I think that inskcape use similar function, you can add detail of
the clipart, and proper "traverse".

You can also tell that to people that maintain the package. We are not
maintainers of the debian and other packages we are working on the site.

> 
> b. openclipart-libreoffice :- In fact one of the ways if
> openclipart-libreoffice is used then you can watch it within
> libreoffice > Tools > Gallery although the gallery itself leaves much
> to be desired. The info. about the package shows openclipart homepage
> so guess you are the guys maintaining that extension/add-on for
> libreoffice. Is there a roadmap for the next release of the tool, I
> may have some some ideas or maybe just take a look at what's cooking.

AFAIK OCAL do not work on any packages that use clipart like debian,
they are, most likely, created by people that maintain the package.

> 
> c. Naming :- The biggest problem I found while going through the
> collections is the naming, rather than naming the collections from
> functional or descriptive point of view they are named
> contributor-wise. This is horrible waste of the user's time as he's
> not going to crawl through the whole archive to look for an image
> which he knows about but cannot find in the current scenario. Maybe
> tagging and some sort of interface to search (maybe ties with a.)

Do you talk about the site or those packages? Packages are created by
people that have nothing to do this OCAL AFAIKT they are normal users,
they donwload clipart and create a package.

> 
> d.Changelog :- From the package sizes I was able to infer that there
> is new material but because of an absence of changelog I was unable to
> know what new categories or ideas have made in this release. Maybe
> some sort of changelog could be thought about. I know that while
> having changelogs made when people code in a VCS is trivial maybe
> something similar could be done when new collections are released
> (don't know). Either way more information would be good.

So it seams that they are new once, it's good.

> 
> e. In many cases it is also painful to figure out who the author is
> and what (if any) contact details of the artist are.

there will be no way to handle this ocal packages is usage of clipart
that are in Public Domain, it's like cloning without attribution only
image matter, If you want to see artist name the site is the place.

> 
> f. libpng 0.15 :- Would the team needs to concern itself with the new
> libpng library in anyway ? http://libpng.org/pub/png/libpng.html
> 
> I do know that at least debian is gonna do a huge libpng transition
> pretty soon which will translate to other debian-derivatives as well.
> 
> http://release.debian.org/transitions/html/libpng1.5.html
> 
> g. While I did see a donate button, I didn't see a donate page. It
> might be a good idea to put up a donate page and actually put some
> sort of price to some of the higher priority features . I know that
> the idea is to remain non-profit but having something for people to
> shoot for is perhaps good for the short-term as well as long-term.
> Maybe something can be worked out for both the developers who are
> working behind it as well as the artist.

Good idea about money for the feature. I had idea about progress bar
like on pledgie.com have and attribution, maybe it will be implemented
in the future.

> 
> h. Social media :- I do see there has been some sort of half-hearted
> attempt to use twitter but perhaps having diaspora would be better as
> much of the audience within diaspora (http://joindiaspora.com) would
> be welcoming about openclipart and maybe be of help in developing
> somethings.

We want to make OCAL more Social there is this blueprint you can add
your comments and ideas, like diaspora support (the same as for other
blueprints) I never use it myself, I heard that name once.
https://blueprints.launchpad.net/openclipart/+spec/ocal-social
there are lots of planes for OCAL that we will implement step by step.

For now all clipart are send to Facebook twitter and G+ (not sure about
that).

> 
> Overall while its good that such a resource like OCAL is there and you
> have ideas of putting new release, it sad in someways to see such a
> wonderful not being able to use in the most optimum way.
> 
> Btw I did not talk about svg port simply for the fact that its double
> the size.

But you have higher resolution - infinite one.

> 
> $ aptitude show openclipart-svg
> Package: openclipart-svg
> State: not installed
> Version: 2.0-1
> Priority: extra
> Section: graphics
> Maintainer: Martin Kelly <aomighty at gmail.com>
> Uncompressed Size: 1,107 M
> Recommends: librsvg2-bin
> Suggests: ksvg, gimp-svg, inkscape, sodipodi, sketch
> Conflicts: openclipart (< 0.10+dfsg-3)
> Description: clip art in SVG format
>  The Open Clip Art Library is a collection of 100% license-free,
> royalty-free, and restriction-free art that you can use for any
> purpose.
> 
>  This package contains the images in Scalable Vector Graphic (SVG)
> format, which is an XML format approved by the W3C.
> Homepage: http://www.openclipart.org
> 
> Tags: made-of::icons, made-of::svg, role::app-data
> 
> I do know though that there are benefits of SVG vs PNG as well.
> 
> Now I could have probably put up some tickets on launchpad but didn't
> know if all of this makes sense or not. Maybe its better to shoot the
> breeze atm and if people see something worthwhile then will put up the
> tickets.

As I said before check all blueprints and put your ideas there, if you
find something that there is not there you can create blueprint.

> 
> Till l8er.

--
Jakub Jankiewicz
twitter: @jcubic
www: http://jcubic.pl