2013-12-14, 03:20
So here's the somewhat convoluted logic for where images are stored when using the "Use Both Local and Remote Images" option.
If the artist directory exists in the defined path AND there is at least one image in the extrafanart folder, then AS puts all images (and the exclusions file) in the local directory.
If the above is not true, then AS stores the images in the normal cache location.
All images that the skin is going to display have to be in one folder, otherwise they can't all be shown. So that's why the logic. I suppose I could set it up to copy all the files from the cache directory and the local directory into a temporary third directory. That's how AS handles multiple artists for one song, and it seems to work.
My concern is about potential lag. If you have a local directory with a metric crap ton of large images, it could take more than a few seconds to copy them to the temp directory. So there could be a long delay before seeing any images. I know there can be a long delay already the first time you view an artist, but that's only the first time. This new delay would happen every single time.
The other thing is that I've got two sets of feedback about location from the people that don't like the current setup. One group would like to have a user defined directory where all images are stored (regardless of source) using the artist's name. I fear for my sanity trying that approach, as I'm bound to run into platform specific UTF-8 encoding issues when creating directories with arbitrary character sets. The second group (that's you right now) seems to want to have the images split based on source (local or remote) and merged later. So I'm tempted to leave it alone and make you all unhappy rather than changing it and still having part of the group unhappy. It's much easier for me that way.
If the artist directory exists in the defined path AND there is at least one image in the extrafanart folder, then AS puts all images (and the exclusions file) in the local directory.
If the above is not true, then AS stores the images in the normal cache location.
All images that the skin is going to display have to be in one folder, otherwise they can't all be shown. So that's why the logic. I suppose I could set it up to copy all the files from the cache directory and the local directory into a temporary third directory. That's how AS handles multiple artists for one song, and it seems to work.
My concern is about potential lag. If you have a local directory with a metric crap ton of large images, it could take more than a few seconds to copy them to the temp directory. So there could be a long delay before seeing any images. I know there can be a long delay already the first time you view an artist, but that's only the first time. This new delay would happen every single time.
The other thing is that I've got two sets of feedback about location from the people that don't like the current setup. One group would like to have a user defined directory where all images are stored (regardless of source) using the artist's name. I fear for my sanity trying that approach, as I'm bound to run into platform specific UTF-8 encoding issues when creating directories with arbitrary character sets. The second group (that's you right now) seems to want to have the images split based on source (local or remote) and merged later. So I'm tempted to leave it alone and make you all unhappy rather than changing it and still having part of the group unhappy. It's much easier for me that way.
