Booklet Creation Feature

[MLP]

My request for one feature would be for coppermine to be able to group all of the "Favorite's Photos" that a user has selected into a booklet that can be printed or saved into well oragnized "book" format with each picture and it's titles and descriptions and all of the associated contact information of each respective author. Each Booklet would have a cover of your choosing and can be saved into an area of the website for shared / public use under a user defined "theme" e.g. "Architectural details". Other users would be able to visit the shared saved booklets and print them and/or download, perhaps as as PDF? The main purpose is to be able group pictures and the associated information into a single source. It's like a phone directory only with a picture of each person listed in the directory next to their phone number. (a simplistic description) This may be a unrealistic request.  thanks

mlp

[Joachim Müller]

Part of what you request is indeed hard to accomplish with default server setups (like PDF creation). However, the important aspect of your request is the idea to allow users to share their favorites with others. I think that's the essence of your proposal, correct?

[MLP]

There are two aspects of my request.

One: Compilation of data into a printable format, and
Two: sharing one's favaorites with others.

I would be delighted to be able to share favorites with others. Perhaps in each group of favorites could be placed under a "user defined theme/heading".

Also, the prinatble format output does not have to be PDF. The format could be as simple as a html page layout. My first choice of output was PDF only because of its wide use.

thanks

MLP

[Joachim Müller]

Printable output of a web-driven gallery is something near to "mission impossible": the www was never built with printing in mind. There are projects that focus on doinbg exactly what you're up to: coming up with a layout that will allow you to print HTML-driven pages. However, the print pages will not be related (design-wise) to the design of your www pages.
That's why I'd say that your second request is turned down, because of two reasons: first, because it't technically nearly impossible. Second: because we have a strict "one issue per thread" policy that you agreed to respect when signing up. That policy applies especially to the feature requests board.
Enabling users to print locally by modifications applied to coppermine's code is (as I suggested above) technically nearly impossible. What you could technically do is export parts of a coppermine-driven gallery and send that content somewhere for purposes of downloading. The downloader could be the end user with desktop software that will do something clever with the download (i.e. generate printing pages) or a picture service like Snapfish e.a.
This being said, you'd have to come up with a desktop app, which is something the coppermine dev team members are not familiar with. So, if you need the printing feature badly, you'll have to team up with others (like Snapfish or other printing services) I'm afraid.

Some food for thought:

• A list apart: Printing a Book with CSS: Boom!
• Snapfish (Hewlett Packard's global photo printing service via web) -> affiliate program (Technical note: HP uses language detection technology similar to the one we use in Coppermine. That's why you might see content when clicking on the Snapfish links that differs from what others can see. Definitely is the case for German users.)

Joachim

P.S. We're not affiliated with Snapfish. I just mentioned them as they are the most important web printing service these days, from a global perspective. There have been others (like Pixaco) who have been bought or who have quit one way or the other. There are local services available as well, but we're talking about a global solution, right?

[MLP]

Thank you for your time responding to my requests. I will look at the A-List possibilty.

MLP