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Step #1 - Operation Step #2 - Images Step #3 - Web Page Step #4 - FTP Step #5 - Finish
Quick Start Guide Detailed Setup Thumbnail Properties WebPage Appearance FTP Settings Program Automation E-mail Settings HTTP Settings Misc Options GPS Setup HTML Properties Miscellaneous HTML
EXIF Editor Batch Processing Rotating Images
Preview Web Pages View Web Pages Sample Web Page Font Properties
RoboPhoto FAQ What's New in v3.0 Screen Shots Advanced Features HTML Template Files Sign Up With Tripod PAD File (htm) PAD File (xml) Legal Info End-User License
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 Advanced Features
RoboPhoto was designed for novice computer users with an emphasis on ease of use, but don't let the simplicity of the user interface fool you. RoboPhoto is a very powerful application with advanced features not found in any other program. There are over 200 configurable options. Geo-Reference Your Photographs Sometimes it's important to know WHERE a picture was taken. RoboPhoto allows you to assign latitude/longitude information to each picture for linking to several popular on-line mapping engines. You can even include a map with your photo galleries that shows the route you took to reach a photo's location. There are several ways to assign the latitude/longitude information. You can manually enter the coordinates using the EXIF editor, interface with an external GPS unit, or use a digital camera that directly encodes the GPS information to the EXIF headers. EXIF Support All modern digital cameras produce images that contain, or can contain, information relating to the pictures. For example, the camera model number and shutter speed may be embedded within the image. RoboPhoto allows you to view, edit or include this information in the web pages that the program creates. This is also handy for permanently recording other information, like an image title and the GPS coordinates. Image Descriptions The EXIF editor allows you to specify a title and a long description for each image. If these exist, they are used for the <!--ImageShortDescription--> and the <!--ImageLongDescription--> tags found in the HTML template files. Instead of creating descriptions that are embedded in the EXIF headers, you can optionally create an XML file that contains them. For example, you may already have an image database that contains descriptions. If that's the case, then just export the descriptions instead of retyping them using the EXIF editor. The XML file must be of the proper format, be named images.xml, and exist in the image source directory. Below is an example of a valid images.xml file: <robophoto> <image> <filename>house.jpg</filename> <shortdesc>My Remodeled Trailer</shortdesc> <longdesc>The new tires were installed yesterday</longdesc> </image> <image> <filename>car.jpg</filename> <shortdesc>My 1974 Vega</shortdesc> <longdesc>This speed demon is BAD!</longdesc> </image> <image> <filename>cat.jpg</filename> <shortdesc>My Cat</shortdesc> <longdesc>This is Fluffy, my cat!</longdesc> </image> </robophoto> The indentation is for clarity only. The text within the tags should be standard ASCII text, not UNICODE. Program Automation RoboPhoto can be fully or partially automated by selecting the appropriate options on the main settings screen. If you're using RoboPhoto to archive images, you may want to use full automation. If your FTP information never changes, you may want to automate just the FTP part so that you're not prompted for it each time. When an item is automated, it's hidden from the user. That means you can automate, for example, everything except for entering the web page name. That would allow clerical workers to use the program. HTML Template Files Web pages are created from the HTML files in the HTML template directory. RoboPhoto simply searches for specific tags and then replaces them with custom HTML. You can create template files to produce any output you desire. This is, potentially, the most powerful feature of the program. It allows you to use RoboPhoto in conjunction with your normal HTML creation tools. For example, you may want to drop a <!--ThumbnailTable--> tag into one of your frames. HTML Customization Files The visual appearance of the web pages can be controlled from the HTML customization screen. These files must exist in the main RoboPhoto directory and have an .HCF extension. The default .HCF file is specified in RP.INI. As long as you maintain the same format, there's no reason why you can't create these files dynamically. Send E-mail RoboPhoto includes an integrated e-mail program. After a web page is created, you can optionally mail to each e-mail address in an e-mail list. The e-mail list and message body can exist either on the local computer or on a server. By storing them on a server, groups of people can share the same list and more effectively communicate among themselves. You can also perform mail merge operations on the message body, meaning that it doesn't have to change for new web pages. Communicate With Server Side Applications RoboPhoto has a built-in HTTP client that allows you to communicate information about newly created web pages to a list of server side script(s). This information can be packaged as either a URL encoded string (for common CGI or ASP scripts) or as an XML based Soap request that's compatible with Microsoft's .NET platform. You could, for example, use this to update a master database of web pages. Or you could automatically submit each new URL to a list of search engines. If you're a .NET developer, you could author services that communicate with a group of RoboPhoto clients. The potential is only limited by the capability of the script. Miscellaneous Options The Misc Options allows you to tweak the various settings, implement RoboPhoto within a proprietary framework, and to interface it with 3rd party applications. There are over 70 different options to choose from. An example implementation is here. RP.INI and MISC.INI Except for the web page name (which can also be automatically created), everything the program needs to function is contained in these files. There's no reason why you can't dynamically create them using 3rd party software prior to running RoboPhoto. If you do this you may also want or need to dynamically create the associated HTML customization file. |