igal - online Image GALlery generator

igal [-option1 -option2 ...]

igal is a quick and easy program for placing your images online with just one command-line. It generates a pretty good-looking set of W3-compliant static HTML slides even with its default settings. To try it out just run igal in a directory with jpg, gif or png files and check the output in a web browser. You can adjust the appearance of the image gallery with the many options listed below or (if you know a bit of HTML) by modifying the .indextemplate.html, .slidetemplate.html and igal.css files that appeared in your image directory. igal also checks for the existence of a $HOME/.igal directory where users can store their own templates, overriding the site-wide /usr/share/igal.

igal needs Perl to run and it also relies on a few other programs that come standard with most Linux distributions. It relies on the ImageMagick package first if available, otherwise it falls back onto cjpeg/djpeg/pnmscale for processing jpg files. The command convert of the ImageMagick package is required to process gif and png files and the identify command enables igal to include IMG HEIGHT and WIDTH tags in the HTML it generates.

If you really like igal please see the file THANKS (normally in /usr/share/igal/). If you wish to make a donation (whatever igal is worth to you or however small) send it via PayPal to epop@stanford.edu.

-a

Write image dimensions and sizes under each thumbnail on the index page. This only works if the ImageMagick command identify is present.

--ad

Like -a but write only the image dimensions.

--as

Like -a but write only the image sizes.

--bigy <n>

Like -y but operates on the image slides, not the thumbnails. Scales image slides to some medium height (e.g. 400), adjusting their width accordingly. Useful if your digital camera spits out large images, like 1600x1200. The originals aren't affected, but scaled copies of your images are stored with the .slide prefix and thumbnails link to these copies. Clicking on the scaled copies in the HTML slides lets users see the full unscaled images. You must use -f between two consecutive runs when you've changed the value of --bigy.

-c

First generate and then publish image slide captions. The first invocation of igal -c generates a .captions file that you may edit. The format of this file is very simple. You should only have to enter your captions after the ---- separator. You may rearrange the image order at this point and also leave out some pictures by simply placing a pound (#) sign at the beginning of their respective lines. A second invocation of igal -c will read your .captions file, include your captions in the slides and rearrange them if necessary.

-C

Like -c but preserve file names as captions when generating the .captions file (strips file name suffix).

--con options

Command line options to pass on to convert or cjpeg internally (see their man pages). This affects all thumbnails and, if --bigy is given, the medium-size slides too. You can set the -quality or go crazy with -negate, -noise, etc. (the last two only work with convert if ImageMagick is installed.

-d <dir>

Operate on image files in directory <dir>, which is also where the HTML and thumbnail files will be generated. The default is the current directory.

-f

Force thumbnail regeneration. Also forces medium-slide regeneration if --bigy is given. Otherwise igal will not regenerate these files if they already exist, and you may end up with stale copies. Definitely use -f between two runs where you've changed the value of --bigy or --con.

-h

Display brief help, same as --help.

--help

Display brief help, same as -h.

-i <file>

Name of the main thumbnail index file. The default is index.html, as desirable for most web servers.

-k

Use the image captions for the HTML slide titles. The default behavior is to use the image names.

-n

Use the image file names for the HTML slide files. Otherwise the default behavior is to simply name your slides 1.html, 2.html, and so on.

-p <n>

The cellpadding value of the thumbnail index tables. The default is 3.

-r

Omit the film reel effect altogether. For a simpler look you can also set the thumbnail background to be the same as the main index page background with the tile background-color option in the igal.css file.

-s

For the simplest setup, omit all HTML slides. Clicking the thumbnails on the main page will just take users to the plain image files.

-t <n>

Height (in pixels) of the tiled image used to simulate the top and bottom "film reel" effect on the thumbnail index page. This is 21 for the default .tile.png image used, but you should set it otherwise if you replace that file with your own design.

-u

Write image captions under each thumbnail on the index page. If you have a .captions file (see options -c or -C) then the captions are read from there, else the file names are used (but the file extension is stripped).

-U

Write image filenames under each thumbnail on the index page (but the file extension is stripped). This option overrides option -u.

-w <n>

Set the thumbnail rows to be <n> images wide in the main index file. Default is 5.

-wx <n>

Set the thumbnail rows to be <n> pixels wide at maximum. The number of thumbnails per row, given in -w is reduced if necessary. Default is to honor -w without regard to the resulting row width.

-x

Omit the image count from the captions.

-y <n>

Scale all thumbnails to the same height of <n> pixels. The default is 75 pixels.

--xy <n>

Scale thumbnails to <n> pixels along their longest dimension. This value is passed to pnmscale and only works properly for jpg images.

--www

Make all igal files world-readable.

--title <s>

Substitutes the string <s> for "<!--TITLE-->" in the index. The default is "Index of Pictures".

--clean

Remove all files igal may have created earlier. This includes thumbnails, scaled down slides, all HTML files, caption file, reel-effect picture, indextemplate and slidetemplate and the stylesheet file.

/usr/share/igal/indextemplate.html The default index template file. /usr/share/igal/slidetemplate.html The default file used to generate slides. /usr/share/igal/igal.css The default style sheet template. /usr/share/igal/tile.png The tiled image used for the "film reel" effect. All four files are copied to your image directory as dotfiles the first time you run igal. Modify the local copies (but keep their names) if you need to further alter the appearance of your slide show (also see -t). igal also checks for the existence of a $HOME/.igal directory where users can store their own templates, overriding the site-wide /usr/share/igal.

Run igal in a directory with jpg or gif images to see what it does. Then play with the options described above and use -h if you need a quick listing. Also see http://www.stanford.edu/~epop/igal for online examples.

There are always some. If you find any let me know. I don't have much time to keep tweaking igal but if any major bugs pop up I probably ought to fix them.

Eric Pop <epop@stanford.edu>

cjpeg, djpeg, pnmscale, identify, convert. If they didn't come standard with your Linux distribution you can find them at rpmfind.net (inside libjpeg and libgr-progs) and at imagemagick.org, respectively. Also try www.ijg.org and netpbm.sourceforge.net.