Should We Move To A New Forum Platform?

[Gary Lewis]

Thanks, Larry.  That really helps.  But if there is no way to rotate a pic, much less auto-rotate, then we've not made progress since posting pics is one of the main issues with Nabble.  

So even if all the other bells and whistles are as helpful as a pocket on a shirt, I don't think they are going to be enough.  

[ratdude747]

What do you mean by auto-rotate? If you mean the "rotation doesn't match what's in the metadata" issue that we've seen on Nabble before, I haven't seen it with discourse (can't say if this "glitch" is a thing or not). If you mean some sort of context-sensitive AI, I haven't ever seen that on a forum.

Hasn't been an issue for me, but I always fix any rotation issues on the computer/phone I'm posting from before uploading. At least with the auto-preview it's a lot easier to catch in advance.

[Gary Lewis]

By auto-rotate I mean that the forum software reads the metadata, learns how the camera was held, and then automatically rotates the pic so you don't have to rotate it.  But there should also be an option to rotate it manually if you want to do so.

From what I've seen Discourse doesn't do that and it doesn't even offer a manual way to rotate them.  Right?

[BigBrother-84]

Hi Larry!

In fact, Gary is referring to the issue numerous members encounter here with Nabble.

Depending the way the picture is took with a phone, the picture can appear upside down or 90°C turned.

Would be great if the platform has the capability to “read” at the metadata and automatically rotate the picture.

[BigBrother-84]

Lol!

Sorry Gary, seems that we were typing simultaneously!

[Gary Lewis]

No problem, Jeff.  Posting pics is the biggest problem we have on Nabble.  So if we move we should move to a platform that fixes that.

[ratdude747]

Manually rotate, no. Rotate off of metadata, to my knowledge, yes. Seems to work with several "raw" images (from the same shoot as the first example):




Edit: to test this, I've uploaded that same picture below:



...which loaded correctly. Apparently my phone doesn't have the issue.

I'm more than happy to test with an image file with such an issue. Seems all the images I'm finding on the site have no valid metadata (as they also aren't rotated when downloaded and viewed locally).

[ratdude747]

Here we go. Pulled a mis-rotated pic of Reamer's and used an EXIF editor to change the rotation to what it should have been.

Original unedited image that I downloaded:



Funny enough, the EXIF metadata indicates no rotation. More on that in a sec.

Here's the edited image (with EXIF data indicating rotation) uploaded direct to Nabble:



... which is correct. But, I selected "no resize" on the first two. Here's a test of that (resize to 750) in respect to metadata:



... AHA! The issue is the resize tool, as it stripped the metadata. Nabble's issue isn't that it can't handle metadata when viewing, but that the resize tool strips the data off. Just so you all can see, here's what my laptop (Arch Linux, Gnome GUI) is showing on all three files:



As for Discourse, here's both metadata'd files, with one resized:



Also note that the resize % is in the post text, so it can be changed without re-uploading as a mere text edit.

[BigBrother-84]

Sherlock, seems that you found an interesting explanation!

Funny, GIF pasting has similar issue.

Nabble looks to have kind of problem with its resize feature.

[Gary Lewis]

Ok, it is apparently time for true confessions: I DON'T KNOW WHAT I'M DOING!  I had assumed that the picture below is wrongly-oriented and that smart forum software would orient it such that the seats would face downward.  Is that incorrect?  When I open the file I don't see orientation in the list of info.

But I've edited the original file to reduce the size, although leaving the metadata. And then when I uploaded it to Nabble I didn't use any resizing.

So, Larry, are you saying Nabble correctly rotates images if we don't use the resize buttons?  Why isn't my image rotated so the seats face down?

[ArdWrknTrk]

Get over it
Nabble can't handle a picture from a wristwatch because the software is made for a 1980's potato.

These are probably artificially imposed limits so the pathetic server doesn't melt down.

[Gary Lewis]

I’m not trying to understand Nabble as it is a lost cause. I’m trying to understand how to test other forums to see if they auto-rotate pics. I thought I understood but apparently don’t.

[ratdude747]

Yes, it seems that the issue (for me at least) seems to only be when resize is used.

As for your pic, it's not showing as rotated when downloaded. Metadata says no rotation.

Here's it rotated with Metadata set appropriately:



Info on exif rotation: http://sylvana.net/jpegcrop/exif_orientation.html

[BigBrother-84]

Larry, I have another question about Discourse.
With Nabble, a new post in a “sub” topic is rapidly hidden (so, easy to not be seem) if a new post is made.
Ok, I’m not clear…

Let’s take the example of the main category «Marketplace».
A member posting a new request will not be seen if another member starts also another thread.

How’s Discourse behavior about “new post alert”?

[ArdWrknTrk]

If Gary didn't have over half the front page cluttered up with pinned topics you wouldn't have this problem...

Maybe increase your page view to 50 topics? 🧐

[Gary Lewis]

Larry - That helps a lot.  Thanks!

And I think I understand how Nabble is working, although you cannot upload a pic with the same name in the same post and try to use re-sizing in one and not in the other.  Nabble gets confused, which confuses me.  

Ok, the first pic of the seats, at the bottom, is my pic which you set the metadata to reflect the wonky rotation.  And it was uploaded to Nabble w/o resizing.  The second pic is the first pic saved with a different name so as not to confuse Nabble, and then uploaded using "big" resizing.  And your rotated image gets put "right" when there's no resizing, but doesn't when there is resizing.  

But I'm still slightly confused.  When I look at the pics in File Explorer I see that the first two are rotated wonkily and yours (Seats_With_No_Rotation_-_Larrys) isn't.  If I understand correctly there's no EXIF info in the first two indicating that they are not rotated correctly, but there is in yours.  Correct?

If that is right then I'm not armed with a file I can use to test other forum software - Larry's.  But what I don't understand is how my pic doesn't have the rotation info.  I took it on my iPhone and then sent it via email to this tablet and then saved it.  But in sending it I probably let Apple downsize it, so might that be where the EXIF info was stripped?




No Sizing:




Big Size:

[Gary Lewis]

Ok, now we are getting somewhere.  Chris has the Discourse forum up, and you can see my most recent post here.  But in the screenshot below you can see what I saw when I added the pic to the post.  Here are the things I noticed:

Popup Menu: When you click the image insertion icon you get a popup menu letting you go select the image you want to insert.  In Windows this is File Explorer.  This saves a step over Nabble as that takes two clicks there.

Uploading: When you Open (at least that's what it is for Windows) it immediately uploads the file instead of having to go back to another menu like at Nabble.  What I don't know what the file size limit is and what happens when you hit the limit.  I'll have to explore that when I have admin access.

Orientation: I've not been given the option to re-orient a pic, although when the metadata is there regarding orientation it seems to correctly orient things on its own.

So Discourse has promise!

[ArdWrknTrk]

It's light years ahead of what we have now.

[ArdWrknTrk]

One of the things that annoys me the most about this forum, is that it opens the reply in a new tab, always!

I would complain about how it behaves from Gmail, but that's them, so I just long click and 'open in browser'

[Gary Lewis]

I know what you mean.  On my iPhone I wind up with a gillion tabs open and then have to go back and close them.

I don't think that Discourse does that, but went back to see and it appears Chris has it down at present so I can't check.  But my remembrance is that you have a reply button that opens up the editor window right there.

Anyway, that's something to check on platforms we test.