Image Process Plugin 1.2.1 & 2.1.1 for Pelican Released

Image Process is a plugin for Pelican, a static site generator written in Python.

Image Process let you automate the processing of images based on their HTML class attributes. Use this plugin to minimize the overall page weight and to save you a trip to Gimp or Photoshop each time you include an image in your post.

Image Process is used by this blog’s theme to resize the source images so they are the correct size for thumbnails on the main index page and the larger size they are displayed at on top of the articles.

This Release

This post actually covers five releases:

v1.2.1 doesn’t add any functionality or bugfixes directly, but is designed to point users to the new v2 releases.
v1.3.0 returned the plugin to the stewardship of Whisky Echo Bravo, who wrote the first versions of this plugin. This is the first version of the plugin available on PyPI as pelican-image-process.
v2.0.0 reorganized the project codebase to make this work as a “namespace plugin”. Added by Pelican 4.5 is a feature to automatically activate such plugins. This release also fixed a bug with the crop API, and added the ability to create progressive JPEGs and to work within Atom feeds. It also transfers the code repo (and project stewardship) to the Pelican-Plugins organization.
v2.1.0 adds the ability to copy EXIF data to processed photos.
v2.1.1 lowers the minimum Pelican version to 3 (from 4.5). Under the hood, it also updates the local development infrastructure to work better on Windows.

Upgrading

to v1.2.1

To upgrade simply use pip:

pip install minchin.pelican.plugins.image-process --upgrade

If you run v1.2.1, you will get a warning message when you generate your site with Pelican encouraging you to upgrade to v2. This is mostly for those who won’t stumble upon this blog entry! That said, the plugin will continue to work as it has previously without further effort on your part.

to v1.3

I’d recommend you skip this update, at this point, and go straight to v2. There’s nothing wrong with this release, pre se, but I’m not in a position to test any installation instructions.

to v2

v1.3 introduced a different package name, so you’ll have to uninstall the old package and install the new one. Again, pip is the simplest way:

pip install pelican-image-process --upgrade
pip uninstall minchin.pelican.plugins.image-process

The new package name and file layout is to make the plugin a “namespace plugin”. Namespace plugins are actually a really cool idea that if you create your package in the right way, your “host” program can find the plugins simply by having them installed on your system! For Pelican, they need to be in the pelican.plugins namespace.

Two caveats of this approach is that you’ll need Pelican version 4.5 (or later) to automatically load these namespace plugins, and (at least if my understanding is correct) you have to either rely on namespace plugins alone OR the PLUGINS setting of your pelicanconf.py; i.e. if you specify PLUGINS in your settings, auto-loading of namespace plugins is turned off. Neither of these are deal breakers, but this background may prove useful in debugging your setup. Overall, I think namespace plugins are an awesome idea, and I hope it doesn’t take too long to get everything switched over.

So if you’re using other non-namespace plugins, or a Pelican version before 4.5, you’ll also need to update your pelicanconf.py with the new plugin name:

# pelicanconf.py

PLUGINS = [
    # others...
    # minchin.pelican.plugins.image_process  # <-- remove this line
    "pelican.plugins.image_process",
]

Finally, v2.0.0 bumps the minimum Pelican version up to 4.5; if you’re using an older version of Pelican and don’t want to upgrade yet, then use v2.1.1 of the plugin.

The new features (generating progressive JPEGs and applying to Atom feed images) are automatically enabled.

As for the change in the crop API, it’s a bugfix so the plugin behaviour should now match the documented (anticipated) behaviour; specifically crop <top> <left> <right> <bottom>.

to v2.1.0

Assuming you’ve done the steps listed above to upgrade to v2.0.0, pip remains the simplest way to upgrade:

pip install pelican-image-process --upgrade

To copy over EXIF data, you’ll need to set IMAGE_PROCESS_COPY_EXIF_TAGS (in your pelicanconf.py) to True. You will also need to install ExifTool. I haven’t tried it but it looks like ExifTool supports Windows, just be sure that it’s been added to your PATH.

to v2.1.1

Assuming you’ve done the steps listed above to upgrade to v2.1.0, pip remains the simplest way to upgrade:

pip install pelican-image-process --upgrade

This version lowers the minimum Pelican version 3 (which is something I needed to incrementally upgrade my site; I’m stuck at v3.7.1 for a bit yet while I upgrade some other plugins).

Thoughts on These Releases and the Future

This part is more of a personal than technical note, and continuation of my thoughts about the last Jinja Filters release.

The “ownership” of this code is even more involved that the Jinja Filters plugin. With Jinja Filters, that was code that I’d written myself, packaged, and eventually moved (at my request) to be under the Pelican Plugins organization. Here, I adopted someone else’s existing code, packaged it and used it myself, and eventually they returned from the woodwork to reclaim it (and then transferred it to the Pelican Plugins organization). On one hand, this represent the wonder of Open Source in that I resurrect a “dead” plugin; on the other, it raises an interesting question of what does ownership mean in such a landscape? Did I ever “own” this code? Was it mine to give away or surrender? I think the language fails here, and so perhaps the term “stewardship” rather than “ownership” is more helpful.

In any case, I’m excited to see that the plugin is being maintained without requiring a bunch of my personal effort and is getting features added as well. When I had assumed stewardship for maintenance, I always felt at a disadvantage because I didn’t have the deep understanding that would have come from writing the original code, so I’m happy to let someone else take that on. I’m slightly sad though because this plugin represented my most starred repo on GitHub, and was the one Pelican plugin that I’d put out to the world that I knew other people were actually using.

Moving forward, I’m not sure if every release will get a release post. I suspect the releases I’m involved in will get a post, but hopefully there will continue to be some without my involvement!

Now, only 10 more plugins to go! I want to move all the plugins I use to namespace plugins and then upgrade from Pelican 3.7.1 to 4.6 (or whatever the then-current version is). I’m a little bit closer. :)