bins - Generate a static HTML photo albums using XML and EXIF tags

bins [-f config_file] [-o STR] [-d STR] [-c color_style] [-s style] [-t template_dir] [-p] [-e] [-i iKey,iKey...] [-v X] [-h] source_dir target_dir

This manual page documents briefly the bins command.

This manual page was written for the Debian distribution because the original program does not have a manual page. Instead, it has documentation in HTML in /usr/share/doc/bins/index.html as well as a -h option.

bins is a program that takes a collection of directories and files containing JPEG images and XML descriptions, combines them with a set of HTML templates, and produces a complete photo gallery of static HTML files, rescaled images at three sizes, and thumbnails.

-f config_file

use an alternative configuration file, instead of ~/.bins/binsrc..

-o STR

Tells script to use only one copy of image using HTML size specs (height, width specs in the image tag) for scaled versions (instead of generating several images, one for each size).

Default is false.

STR is an optional argument to set how the one image is generated. Possible values:

scaled

(make scaled copy of orig in target_dir hierarchy, sized to max size). Default.

copied

(copy orig to web dir)

custom

(use copy if filesize < 1meg resize, resave, if bigger than 1 meg)

-d STR

Determine if tags found in EXIF structure are added in desc files.

STR is one of "always", "never" or "exist" ("exist" only adds if the desc file already exist.) Default is always.

-c color_style

Color style to use. Can be blue (default one), green, ivory and pink or any other one defined in configuration/description files. This option is deprecated (and thus, not supported by all templates), in favor of alternate stylesheets and the customStyleSheet parameter.

-s style

Template style to use (styles provided for now are joi, marc, martin, mwolson petrus, satyap and swigs).

-t template_dir

Specify location of html templates.

Default is ~/.bins, falling back to default versions in /usr/share/bins/templates.style.

-p

Numbers preceding the album title, followed by an underscore are stripped. If this option is given, then prefix ordering numbers on directories are removed. For example, if one has directories may, june, and august, they can be renamed 0_may, 1_june, and 2_august and they will appear in the album in the correct order.

-e

Tells the script to generate an editable version of the album. If set, some more links and icons are added to directly access the .xml files for editing. This is for editing purposes, not for a final album.

-i iKey,iKey...

Sets "ignore" keywords which will be compared against the contents of the ignore field of the album's XML file, in the ignore field in description section. If any of the iKeys match those in the album's "ignore" field, that album will not be processed. See also the ignore parameter.

-n iKey,iKey...

Sets "hidden" keywords which will be compared against the contents of the ignore field of the album's XML file, in the ignore field in description section. If any of the iKeys match those in the album's "ignore" field, that album will be hidden: it will not be linked anywhere. See also the hidden parameter.

-v X

X is the verbosity level (between 0 and 3)

-h

Show the help string this man page was originally based on.

bins is also controlled by other files.

/etc/bins/binsrc

~/.bins/binsrc

The binsrc files are XML files with a top level bins tag. There are three element names with bins: parameter, colors, and sizes. Each of these has a name attribute which names the data in the element content.

The colors element has a style attribute, that can be used with the colorStyle parameter or the -c command line option. It contains color elements. The color elements name has one of the following values which is substituted into the template files. This tag is deprecated, in favor of alternate stylesheets and the customStyleSheet parameter.

PAGE_BACK

PAGE_TITLE

MAINBAR_BACK

MAINBAR_TITLE

MAINBAR_LINK

MAINBAR_CURRENTPAGE

SUBBAR_BACK

SUBBAR_LINK

SUBBAR_CURRENTPAGE

SUBBAR_TITLE

The sizes element contains size elements which each have a name attribute, a shortname attribute, a height attribute, and a width attribute. These default to

Small, Sm, 40%, 40%

Medium, Med, 64%, 64%

Large, Lg, 100%, 100%

name and shortname are used in the output HTML and in generated filenames. The default values listed above are passed through gettext for localization; overrides in binsrc files are not, and should be in the desired language.

For the parameter elements the name attribute names one of the following parameters.

addExifToDescFile

If set to 1 (the default), write EXIF data found in the image file to the image desc file (but see also the -d flag).

albumThumbInSubAlbumPage

If set to 1 (the default), display the current album thumbnail in sub-albums page if it has pictures, with links to the thumbnails page.

allThumbnailsPage

If set to 1, generate a page with all thumbnails in the album and sub-albums. This is deactivated because it is an alpha feature which seems to not work properly.

backgroundImage

Set this to the image that should be displayed as the background of the album pages. The Image will be copied to the static files directory. This works only with joi, marc, martin and petrus templates for now.

borderOnThumbnails

Width of the border of the thumbnail's image in the thumbnails page, in pixels. 0 means no border.

colorStyle

Name of the color style to use. Default is blue. See also the -c option which takes precedence. This option is deprecated (and thus, not supported by all templates), in favor of alternate stylesheets and the customStyleSheet parameter.

compactHTML

If set to 1, generated HTML code is cleaned up to reduce the size of pages and thus, speed up browsing. This reduces the size of HTML BINS files by about 30%. See HTML::Clean(3) to know how optimizations are performed.

configFileName

Can be set in the global config file, but only influences the basename of the local user config file. Defaults to .binsrc.

createEmptyDescFields

If set to 1 (the default), add empty description fields in the description section when the image description file is created to ease later manual editing.

createHtaccess

If 1, create an Apache .htaccess file in the root dir of the album with the encoding charset bound to html and htm files. This is a parameter global for the album, it can't be set in album.xml.

customStyleSheet

Set this to the CSS file that should be used as the stylesheet for the album pages. The CSS file will be copied to the static files directory. This works only with joi, marc, martin and petrus templates for now.

dateString

Specify the format of date strings. This variable accepts all formats supported by date(1).

defaultSize

Size to use when user clicks directly on the thumbnail in the thumbnails page instead of one of the size name. 0 is the first size (Small in the default config), 1 the second (Medium), and so on. Set this variable to -1 if you don't want the thumbnail to be clickable.

deExifyImages

If set to 1, do NOT copy exif data found in the source images to any of the generated resized images. Setting this option can yield significant space savings, especially for thumbnail and imagelist pages.

emptyAlbumDesc

If set to 1, and album desciption is not set, no message will be displayed (instead of the "No long/short description available" one).

enlarge

If set to 1, small images are enlarged in the "med" and "large" series. (defaults to 0).

excludeBackgroundImage

If set to 1, the image with the name given in backgroundImage will be excluded from the current directory.

excludeDirs

Exclude directories that match this regexp (if set). Set to CVS$ in default config, so that CVS subdirs aren't processed by bins.

excludeFiles

Exclude image files that match this regexp (if set). No image files are excluded in default config.

globalConfigDir

Can't usefully be set, since it has already been used when the first config file is read. Defaults to /etc/bins.

hidden

Put here a comma separated list of keyword. If one on this keyword is found in the ignore field in the description section of an album.xml, then this sub-album will be hidden, i.e. it will be generated but not linked anywhere. You can also use the -n command line option.

homeURL

Set this to your home page's URL. This is used for the leave button in some templates.

htmlEncoding

HTML pages charset encoding.

ignore

Put here a comma separated list of keyword. If one on this keyword is found in the ignore field in the description section of an album.xml, then this sub-album will be ignored, i.e. it will not be processed. You can also use the -i command line option.

imagePageCycling

If set to 0 next/prev-Links will be hidden if the actual page is the last/first Image page.

javaScriptPreloadImage

If set to 1, add some javascript code in image pages to preload the next image of the same size when current one is loaded, to speed up the album browsing.

javaScriptPreloadThumbs

If set to 1, add some javascript code in thumbnails pages to preload thumbnails of the next page when current one is loaded, to speed up the album browsing.

jpegQuality

Quality of scaled jpegs (lower number = more compression, lower quality) in 1-100 range (default of 75). See imagemagick docs for more details.

linkInsteadOfCopy

If set to 1, we link the picture instead of copying it if possible (i.e. scaleIfSameSize is set to 0 and destination image doesn't have to be rotated: rotateImages is set to original or none, or orientation is already correct). Warning : if whenSrcSmaller is set to enlarge, original image can be modified.

linkRelative

If set to 1, we use a relative path for the link if linkInsteadOfCopy is set to 1.

maxAlbumsForLongSubAlbum

If the number of sub albums is greater (than this value which defaults to 20), generate a short sub album page instead of the long one. (Short sub album pages appear to be unsupported at the moment; this option is disabled.)

noRotation

Don't perform rotation on files matching this regexp. This can used in conjunction with scaleIfSameSize=0 and a scaled size of 100%x100% to keep original pictures in your album.

numThumbsPerPage

Number of thumbnails (default of 16) displayed in each page in an album.

pathImgNum

If set to 1 the path in the imageview contains the number of the current image.

pathShowIcon

If set to 1 the path contains icons.

previewMaxWidth

previewMaxHeight

Max thumbnail width and height (default 150x150).

jpegProgressify

whether to convert generated jpegs to progressive using jpegtran (if available). can be never, always, or smaller (if the progressified file is smaller than the baseline).

reverseOrder

Are we reversing sorting order for pictures or directories ? 0=none, 1=dirs, 2=pix, 3=both. See also -r command line option.

rotateImages

Do we rotate images if the Orientation EXIF tag is found? If set to original (the default), the original image is rotated the first time, and then it is left untouched. If set to destination, this is all the scaled images and thumbnails that are rotated. This is less efficient, but the original images are preserved (and is useful if the original images are read-only). If set to none, no rotation is performed.

rotateWithJpegtran

If set to 1, bins try to use the jpegtran program to rotate JPEG images if it is available. jpegtran is faster and lossless, but some versions fail to perform rotation correctly, so it is deactivated in default config. If set to 0 or if jpegtran is not found, mogrify (from ImageMagick) is used.

scaleIfSameSize

If set to 1, we scale the picture even if destination size is the same as the original picture, if set to 0 (the default), the original image is just copied if the size is correct.

scaleMethod

What method should be used to create scaled pictures and thumbnails ? Can be either scale or sample. sample is faster, scale is better.

searchEngine

If 1, generate a search page. Images can be searched on description fields set in the searchFields parameter.

searchFields

Space separated list of description field names used by the search engine, if searchEngine is set to 1.

searchLimit

Maximum results returned by the search engine, if searchEngine is set to 1. Note that if this number is too high, it can hang the browser.

stripDirPrefix

If 1, numbers preceding the album title, followed by an underscore, are stripped. If this parameter is set, then prefix ordering numbers on directories are removed. For example, if one has directories may, june, and august, they can be renamed 0_may, 1_june, and 2_august and they will appear in the album in the correct order. This can be overridden by the -p command line option.

templateStyle

Name of the template style to use. Default is swigs. Other templates provided with BINS are joi, marc, martin, petrus and satyap. Several templates can be used for different sub-album of an album, by using this parameter in the bins section of the album.xml files. See also the -s option which takes precedence over binsrc (but not album.xml).

thumbnailBackground

If set to 1, add a background colour (SUBBAR_BACK) to the thumbnail's cell in the thumbnails page so that if the top and bottom borders are wider than the image (for example, if it is in portrait mode), instead of spilling over, there is a border around the whole picture. By default, use the PAGE_BACK color.

thumbnailInImageList

Display thumbnails on the Image List page, set to 1 by default.

thumbnailPageCycling

If set to 0 next/prev-Links will be hidden if the actual page is the last/first Thumbnail page.

thumbPrevNext

If set to 1 (the default), display thumbnails close to the previous and next link at the bottom of the image page.

thumbsPerRow

Number of thumbnails (default of 4) displayed in each row in an album.

titleOnThumbnail

Should the title be displayed on top on the thumbnail in the thumbnails page? (defaults to 1.)

treePreview

If set to 1, preview thumbnails will be showed in the album tree page. This works only with joi, marc and petrus templates for now.

updateOriginalPerms

If set to 1, read permissions on images will be set, to ensure http deamon will be able to read them.

userConfigDir

Can be set in the global config file (since after the user one is read, it is too late). Defaults to ~/.bins and is processed by bsd_glob (see File::Glob for details.)

xmlEncoding

XML files charset encoding.

image.jpg

The EXIF tags are extracted from the image. Currently only the Orientation tag influences the processing, but a variety of settings are copied into the HTML file generated via the details.html template.

image.jpg.xml

The XML file contains an image element, which contains three child elements:

description

which has field children that contain per-image data. The name attribute names the tag (allowing simple extensibility, see the bins_edit --generic flag) but bins itself currently only makes use of

title

description

people

location

date

event

bins

which works as described with the binsrc file settings, except that many of the settings are not meaningful in the context of a single picture.

exif

which has a cache of values copied from the EXIF tags in the image, to allow simpler processing by other tools.

If a user wants to override the EXIF values and provide a replacement (such as a corrected Orientation or an Owner setting that reflects who you loaned the camera to) adding a priority attribute with a value of "1" will prevent bins from replacing it with the value in the image.

album.xml

This file contains an album element, which contains description and bins stanza as described for an image. The are extensible in the same manner, but bins only makes use of

dirname

descFileName

shortdesc

title

sampleimage

longdesc

include_images.txt

includes image filenames (relative to the current album, i.e. the directory where the include_images.txt file is stored.) Each filename appears on a line by itself; a line beginning with a # is a comment, and lines composed entirely of whitespace are ignored. Otherwise, the line is exactly the filename. These images are included in the order listed, and added after any that actually appear in the directory.

template.html

There are a number of template HTMLfiles which are used to generate the actual images. The base names of these are

tree

imagelist

subalbum

thumbnail

details

image

The default versions of these files in /etc/bins/templates.default should show how they work, as does the HTML::Template documentation. Aside from the COLOR substitutions described above, a template can also reference

BINS_VERSION

ENCODING

GENERATED_DATE

BINS_ID

bins_edit (1), jpegtran (1), File::Glob, HTML::Template, imagemagick.

This manual page was written by Mark W. Eichin eichin@thok.org for the Debian system (but may be used by others). As it is mostly derived from the bins program itself, it is covered by the GNU General Public License.