New Signature Pic feature [FEEDBACK]

Post by **exp** » Sat Jul 29, 2006 5:31 am

also refer to: http://wiki.anidb.info/w/SigServer_DEV

well,

i guess most ppl got a general idea from the main page and some other talks by now. we've also gotten some pretty interesting hosting offers so it'll probably only be a matter of time till we have secured a host for this feature, but... that means we have to find someone to code it soon :P

this thread is meant as a place for brainstorming on features this new system should have.

here a short outline of the way it is supposed to work:
(Let's call the new server "sig server" for now)
* The sig server has it's own user database
* Users can configure the signature pics via a webinterface of the sig server
* The sig server provides an url which returns the sig pic
* When the url is requested the sig server will look for a locally cached pic or cached anidb status information for the user and will either return the cached pic, a new pic created with the cached information or will issue an http request to retrieve the needed stats via as XML and then create the pic.

It is important to underline at this point that the sig server does never directly interact with the anidb database. It does not have SQL access, it does not store the users anidb password (only their anidb username) and it never modifies any information on anidb.

On suggestion for how things could look like (feel free to suggest other ways):
* AniDB will link to the sig server
* A first time user will visit the sig server and register a new account (username and password can be different from anidb)
* Once registered the user gets to a configuration page where he has to enter his anidb username (without the anidb password!) and there will be a help text explaining the required profile settings on anidb for this to work (the anidb XML interface will only provide the information if the user selected certain permissions for the guest user)
* the user can then either select an image from a selection of publicly available pictures stored on the server or can upload is own picture (for each own picture the user can specify whether it should be made public or not (needs mod review)).
* once a picture is selected the user can select the type of data shown and the formatting from predefined profiles or can define his own profile (profile can be made public)
* a profile should be very configurable, allowing selections like:
** information to display
** font/size/color/location/... for each part
** maybe some kind of basic scripting
* one user should be able to specify upto N signature picture+profile combinations which can all be active at the same time (maybe 5 ?)
* some nice statistics and a modding interface would be good
...

there are probably tons of areas where such a service could be improved :o)
so just post your ideas!

BYe!
EXP

PS: hell, feels kinda good to write feature requests, when you know that you don't have to implement any of it }:o)

OnegaiNL · Post by **OnegaiNL** » Mon Jul 31, 2006 8:25 pm

So it's like those "System-stats" kind of signatures ?
The one's that show how much HDD space and stuff is left.

Would be nice if it will show total of what you have
series
episodes
gb

etc

lucky644 · Post by **lucky644** » Fri Aug 04, 2006 2:10 am

I like the idea.

I have a mostly idle server, very powerful, and it needs to be used.

There is more than enough horsepower for this.

Tharivol · Post by **Tharivol** » Sat Aug 05, 2006 7:46 pm

OnegaiNL wrote:Would be nice if it will show total of what you have
series
episodes
gb

Well... I prefer something like "last watched", "highest rated" etc rather than only stats

Simboul · Post by **Simboul** » Tue Aug 08, 2006 5:55 pm

A good thing will be view all file you have set to hard drive.

In mylist you can only view anime that all file you got are on hard drive. It can be interesting if you can know witch file you have on hard drive (can watch now)

Hoerie · Post by **Hoerie** » Tue Aug 08, 2006 10:58 pm

You could also look on your harddrive itself...

Post by **exp** » Wed Aug 09, 2006 3:41 am

Simboul wrote:A good thing will be view all file you have set to hard drive.

In mylist you can only view anime that all file you got are on hard drive. It can be interesting if you can know witch file you have on hard drive (can watch now)

on a small signature pic?.... you must either have an incredible high-res display or a very small mylist :P

BYe!
EXP

Garfieldx · Post by **Garfieldx** » Wed Aug 09, 2006 7:15 pm

Simboul wrote:A good thing will be view all file you have set to hard drive.

In mylist you can only view anime that all file you got are on hard drive. It can be interesting if you can know witch file you have on hard drive (can watch now)

Hey - on a 100x200 pic this would equal about 2.5 pixel for every file on my HD...

I kind of like the idea of having the possiblity to link to a sig-pic showing some info from the myplace-stats or mylist, like last viewed file or last votes.
I'm defenitly looking forward to see this feature.

cu Garfield"Noglassesorhigh-resisgoingtohelpthere"X

MyPlague · Post by **MyPlague** » Wed Aug 09, 2006 11:37 pm

Some ideas are:

- Last added file
- Last watched file
- Highest and worst rated series
- Ability to select manually which file you are currently watching (think xfire, but manual.. Or if someone is willing to code a wmp plugin that takes a hash and compares it, like anidb o'matic)
- Total amount of anime expressed in mb/gb, total number of series or total number of files on hard disk or cd/dvd.
- Ability to adjust the background of the signature by eg uploading your own background (always hated that about those xfire sigs

)
- Rating in the list of users, based on most series, most gb, most watched, ...
- The ability to choose between a number of signature sizes

OnegaiNL · Post by **OnegaiNL** » Fri Aug 11, 2006 1:32 pm

Tharivol wrote:
OnegaiNL wrote:Would be nice if it will show total of what you have
series
episodes
gb
Well... I prefer something like "last watched", "highest rated" etc rather than only stats

I think they're making various templates for whatever you want it to show ;p

Post by **exp** » Sat Aug 12, 2006 2:17 am

OnegaiNL wrote:
Tharivol wrote:
OnegaiNL wrote:Would be nice if it will show total of what you have
series
episodes
gb
Well... I prefer something like "last watched", "highest rated" etc rather than only stats
I think they're making various templates for whatever you want it to show ;p

well that's the idea.
but for that we of course first have to collect some ideas on what bits of information users would like to be able to add to their signature pics.
that's one of the reasons for this thread :P

BYe!
EXP

AnimeOtaku · Post by **AnimeOtaku** » Sat Aug 12, 2006 8:43 am

I would prefer something like this:
- how much eps I have or how many file,animes,GByte
- how much percentage did I watch from it

W1N9Zr0 · Post by **W1N9Zr0** » Sat Aug 12, 2006 10:07 pm

This data would be usefull:

MyPlague wrote:- Last added file
- Last watched file
- Highest and worst rated series
- Total amount of anime expressed in mb/gb, total number of series or total number of files on hard disk or cd/dvd.
- Ability to adjust the background of the signature by eg uploading your own background (always hated that about those xfire sigs )
- Rating in the list of users, based on most series, most gb, most watched, ...

AnimeOtaku wrote:- how much eps I have or how many file,animes,GByte
- how much percentage did I watch from it

Basicly the MyList table we see on the MyPlace page but:
- Additional separate Size for onHDD and all others together (or all separate and allow basic math functions?

)
- Last watched ep/file/series
- Last rated series
- Best rated, worst rated (for ties use most recent rating)
- Date for the last update to MyPlace (update = add files/mark watched/rate/review)

Having direct access to the XML server would be nice too.

Post by **pelican** » Mon Aug 14, 2006 6:31 pm

Since nobody's stepping up to do this, I'll specify a really simple version with pseudo-code to get you started so that exp can stop whining about it every hour in the moderators' channel on irc.

User requests http://anidbsigserver/sig?username

If local file somedir/username.png does not exist or hasn't been modified today:
- Request XML from http://anidb.info/perl-bin/animedb.pl?s ... ngusername
- Parse XML (use a library with XPath support)
- Generate image (using ImageMagick or something), save it to somedir/username.png
- If any of these steps fail, return an error image
Redirect (temporary) to somedir/username.png

Doesn't really have to be PHP, I'm sure. Perl, Python or whatever you like can almost certainly be arranged as exp got lots of hosting offers.

Don't worry about customisation for now, that only affects the image generation step and you can work up to it. Having some functional code makes all the difference.

Cyrano423 · Post by **Cyrano423** » Mon Aug 14, 2006 6:45 pm

pelican wrote: Doesn't really have to be PHP, I'm sure. Perl, Python or whatever you like can almost certainly be arranged as exp got lots of hosting offers.

If it is in PHP it can be done using GD ... though depending on the host GD might not be setup by default. So I'd advise checking for it, and if it isn't pre-loaded, trying to force it to load. To do so ... check essential functions needed for image creation, in this manner.

Code: Select all

<?php 

if (!function_exists('imageftbbox')){ 
   $a=(PHP_SHLIB_SUFFIX)?PHP_SHLIB_SUFFIX:'dll'; 
   $b=('dll'==$a)?'php_':''; 
   $c=@dl($b.'gd2.'.$a); 
   if (!$c) $c=@dl($b.'gd.'.$a); 
   if (!$c) die('gd not loaded'); 
} 

if (function_exists('imageftbbox')) echo 'GD is supported';


?>

Just throw that in a php file on one of the servers, and see if it spits out anything bad ... if it doesn't then it's cool. If gd is supported ... maybe I can throw something together if time permits. I'm actually one of the original developers of the audioscrobbler sig (I helped Steve develop it).

If there are any errors, or GD isn't (or is for that matter) supported ... let me know.

- Prasand J.