Version 2.3.2 includes the large cache-optimization patch written by Eric Pollman which reportedly can improve performance by 10X or more in certain test conditions. I have tested it on Zope 2.5.1 and Zope 2.6.4 (on FreeBSD and Debian Linux platforms, respectively), but it probably works on later Zopes and any platform on which PIL is available. This also fixes a bug with handling width and height attributes, should they be set to strings instead of ints, which avoids some annoying editing problems. Get it from the Narya project at SourceForge: http://sourceforge.net/projects/narya-project Cheers, Terry From the README.txt file: VarImage 2.3 VarImage means "variable image". It provides a way to make on-the-fly modifications to an image in Zope simply by referring to the correct URL. [...] Syntax The URL-command is parsed as a chain of "operations" to be applied to the original image, separated by "." (period). Each operation is specified as an "operator", followed by zero or more "arguments", separated by "_". Arguments and operators must be composed of only letters and numbers ([A-Za-z0-9], note that "_" and "." are not legal because they are used as separators). Other than the fact that floating point values have to use "o" (the letter "o") instead of "." for the decimal point, this works well. Colors are represented by strings, usually as hexadecimal codes, with a prefix of "x" and 6 hexadecimal characters. Component images may be referred to by their unadorned Zope ID, so "myimage/components/mycomponent" is simply "mycomponent". Note that, to be useful, you have to use only letters and numbers in the name of components. Each operation is applied in sequence, to the result of the previous operation, and then the final result is returned. Examples If you have a VarImage "shinobu_jpg", you can get it in an exact size of 100x100 (regardless of the original aspect):: shinobu_jpg/s_100 or 100x50:: shinobu_jpg/s_100_50 or you can thumbnail it into a 70x50 space (the longer dimension will be determined by the specified limit, while the smaller is determine by the image aspect ratio -- i.e. the image will "fit" into the available 70x50 space):: shinobu_jpg/f_70_50 or you can set the horizontal or vertical dimensions:: shinobu_jpg/h_85 shinobu_jpg/v_100 (The above examples are converted from the Version 1 docs). You can also convert the image to PNG or GIF format:: shinobu_jpg/tn_100.png shinobu_jpg/tn_100_200.gif And do color effects, such as black-and-white:: shinobu_jpg/bw or color-multiplication:: shinobu_jpg/mult_x0e5f00.png shinobu_jpg/bw.R.gif Special Commands For a help page with a complete list of all currently understood operators, use:: shinobu_jpg/help If you need to clear the cache and start over for some reason (this is necessary a lot when you're writing a new plugin):: shinobu_jpg/clear_cache [...] How It Works VarImage inherits from Zope's Image and ObjectManager types, so it is an image that also acts as a folder. The folder contains a Temporary Folder named "cache". When you query for a modified image, it first checks to see if the cache already contains the image. If so, it returns that. Otherwise, it uses Python Imaging Library to generate the image, and stores the result in the cache. [...] Writing Plugins It is now trivial to add a plugin operator to VarImage, and you do not need any understanding of Zope to do this. You will need to understand how to manipulate and process images in Python. [...] Author and Licensing Terry Hancock wrote VarImage for Anansi Spaceworks. It may be redistributed under the terms of the Gnu Public License. The full text of the GPL is in the file LICENSE.txt in this distribution. -- Terry Hancock ( hancock at anansispaceworks.com ) Anansi Spaceworks http://www.anansispaceworks.com