Bodega server availability for creating assets

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

On Sunday 20 October 2013 11:46:38 Aaron J. Seigo wrote:
> On Sunday, October 20, 2013 03:27:57 Thomas Pfeiffer wrote:
> > On Saturday 19 October 2013 16:32:21 Wolfgang Romey wrote:
> > > Is there a need for wallpapers, to have icons ( or thumbnails)? Would it
> > > not be easier, when the server would be modified in a way, that it does
> > > not expect an icon,
> > 
> > We need something to display in the list alongside the name, and to me it
> > makes sense especially for wallpapers since for them, thumbnails are much
> > more useful for users than names in a list.
> 
> this is true for many other kinds of assets, too (books, e.g.)
> 
> other content stores similarly require an icon to be generated or provided,
> so it’s quite normal.

Sure. I just meant to emphasize that for wallpapers they are even more useful 
- I'd say probably even necessary - than for other kinds. For a book it's an 
additional cue to ease visual scanning and it makes the list look much nicer, 
but if you know what book you're looking for, you can identify it by its name 
as well. Wallpapers, on the other hand, are rarely (if ever) known by name.

For some assets (e.g. books or music) we may even actually face the situation 
where people don't have anything they can use for an icon (not every book or 
every music track has a cover designed, especially for people just starting 
out to produce something). Therefore while uploading an icon for those assets 
should definitely be encouraged, it might be useful to have a fallback icon so 
that we don't prevent assets from being uploaded on the basis of a missing 
icon, which imho would be a bit discriminating. It would just be sad if a 
useful feature like icons would turn into a barrier for participation.

For those kinds of assets (like PDFs or videos) where automatic thumbnail 
generators already exist, for optimal convenience for Partners, the server 
could auto-generate an icon in case they don't provide one. This is not a 
must-have feature, but certainly a nice one to have (of course the usefulness 
of icon-sized thumbnails is in many cases limited compared to author-provided 
icons, but it would still be better than nothing).