[Zope] [ANNOUNCE] VarImage 2.4 released

[Terry Hancock]

VarImage 2.4.0 Released!

"VarImage" or "Variable Image" is a dynamic image 
manipulation product for Zope which allows images to be 
resized, filtered, and otherwise manipulated by a simple 
URL syntax, using a set of plugin "operators" which can be 
chained.

Example:

MyImage/th_500_200.bw.jpg

With stock VarImage, this thumbnails the image to 500x200*, 
converts to black and white, and converts to JPEG format 
for publication.

*This is the "foveal thumbnail" which crops as needed to 
acheive the desired aspect ratio while maximally preserving 
the "foveal region" of the image, which you can edit from 
the Zope Management page of VarImage objects.

VarImage is a sub-project of the "Narya Project Incubator 
and Forum" project

http://sourceforge.net/projects/narya-project
http://narya.net

and is distributable under the Gnu Public License.


RELEASE 2.4:

This is a much more polished version of VarImage, owing to a 
three-month stint without internet access (and therefore 
nothing to do on the computer but hack. ;-)).

The only minus is that VarImage probably now requires Python 
2.3 / Zope 2.7.0 now (but you were gonna upgrade by now 
anyway, right?).  I say "probably" because I simply haven't 
tested it with earlier versions.

Highlights:

* Changed plugin profile to include an explicit "caller" 
reference (just like the "self" in Python object methods).  
This really simplifies writing plugins which need to access 
image properties (e.g. it could use information in a 
caption to control a plugin's behavior).

* Referer blocking REALLY works now.  Furthermore, there are 
several popular REFERER policies that are very easy to use 
VarImage for now.

* Configuration files using .cfg format.

* Security against DoS style attacks: it is now possible to 
set various kinds of limits on operator chaining and 
argument dimensions to avoid abusive demands on your 
server.  (I've never heard of VarImage actually being 
exploited this way, but the possibility has been suggested, 
and these limits attempt to address that threat).

SOURCEFORGE RELEASES PAGE:
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=99506

FULL RELEASE NOTES and CHANGELOG:
http://sourceforge.net/project/shownotes.php?release_id=277890

ACTUAL DOWNLOAD SITE:
http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/narya-project/VarImage-2.4.0.tgz?download

Thanks for your interest in VarImage, I hope you find it 
useful.

Terry Hancock


--
Terry Hancock ( hancock at anansispaceworks.com )
Anansi Spaceworks  http://www.anansispaceworks.com