PavukIDF's Attachment Processor has been extended to perform automatic
processing of image files uploaded by users. The Attachment Processor
will be covered in greater detail in the Jan/Feb Spectrum article that
I'm writing.

Any record in any database in Pavuk may have any number of binary
attachments linked to it. The designer simply puts the Attach button
on the relevant forms. In this way, Pavuk is also a content/document
management system. The Attachments popup shows all posted attachments
and ones pending waiting for the user to Save the record updates to
the database.

The Database Definition now has fields for the designer to specify the
thumbnail and regular image sizes. Each size is an imaginary box at
NxN pixels. Let's say that the designer sets the image size to be
1000x1000px. When the user uploads an image file, it may be
5000x2500px. When it is saved, the AP will resize the image to
1000x500px which preserves the aspect ratio. If the image size is
smaller, it will be upsized to fit the default size.

This ensures that all images are the same dimensions. This serves 3
purposes:
1. It prevents the user from actually storing a 10MB image from some
scanner set to an unreasonably high resolution and which will use a
lot of storage. (I've seen this more times than I care to count).
2. For ecommerce systems, it ensures that the display image on the
system is constant.
3. No user interaction or intervention on image processing for sizing
purposes is needed.

Further extending images is the new "default" processing. For any
database record, there may be many images and other attachments. The
new "default image" function runs in the Attachment window. The user
may simply click on this command and the record will now have a
thumbnail that is the correct size and now appears on the form.

A path may be set in the Database Definition for access by the
ecommerce system - typically Apache. When the default image is
selected, the primary image and thumbnail are linked to a path that
makes them readable by Apache and available locally and from a remote
HREF tag.

The new image processing makes the management of ecommerce databases
using PavukIDF as the backend simple and consistent. Thanks to the
sandbox users who inspired these enhancements.