Deprecated - Media and document management

Hiya Guys,

Am just finishing off a webphone.module specification for a drupal based site.

The functionality is very simple:

1. in the user profile list an automatic webphone indicator displays whether the person is online/offline/on a call....and a direct link to "phone" the user is online.

For those of you not familiar with Voice over Internet Protocol...or VOIP..it is superb! and it's FREE!!!
It's the ability to speak to people over the internet for free person to person and text chat privately user-2-user.

Have spent the last few months evaluating the various models out there and the skype on came out as one of the better ones. It's based on p2p technology (same guys that develoepd grokster have made skype)..so the quality is very good.

The base model of skype is free...cross platform (works with mac, pc, linux & handheld computers) and is very easy to use and install.

You can get a copy here: http://www.skype.com/download

there is an add-on to skype people can buy..such as the ability to phone real phone numbers (computer-to-computer webphone calls are free)...or buy a virtual phone number so people can phone you from a normal phone (normal phone-2-webphone).

It's also interesting in the sense that the base code for skype is downloadable. I'm not a c++ programmer, but there is scope there to change the interface to suit.

I'm due to have the drupal webphone.module ready closer to the weekend and was just wondering if anyone else is interested in this area. I plan to clean up the module I'm working on and put in the sandbox with a view of releasing it on here as a proper module.

I'm currently working a purely community contributed media website based on videos. Right now I'm in the process of preparing to launch my site and at the same time I'm giving back to the drupal community by posting all my modifcations and tricks I figured out while being introduced to drupal and customizing the drupal system for my site.
I made this thread because I will be posting back soon with documentation on this subject (the above title) and hopfully this can help someone else. Plus I wanted to be the first post in this forum category =P

I'm just coming to grips with wap and wifi, be gentle. Recently, I downloaded and tried out that most excellent of modules...media.module. I have have a couple of questions for the more learned among us. The way I understand it, video can be used one of two ways on the web. First, you can download and then play the file through something like quicktime or windows media player. The advantage here is that the quality of the video is predetermined, that is, based on your media player...not on connection. The second way is to use streaming video. The disadvantage here is that your net connection and bandwith size determine the video quality as it plays as it's being transmitted, not after it's fully loaded. If you have a fat connection with mucho bandwith, awesome, otherwise be prepared for video breaks with poor quality. Ok...that aside. What's the deal with the extensions, for example...wma, wmv, avi, ogg etc. I know they are formatting extensions, but I have read some postings here and am confused. I hear everyone rejoicing over media.module. Yes, it's awesome. But, with flexinode for example, I can upload all sorts of different types of files without worry. Other than making a playlist, what's the difference between flexinode's uploading capabilities and media.module's? Flexinode allows any file extension to be uploaded and media module supports only four extensions...wma, wmv, ogg, and avi. Also, as a side note...is there anyway I can limit the type of file extensions uploaded by users with flexinode? For example, only wma and wmv and not avi? I know its alot to ask, but I'm stumped. Can someone please tell me what I'm missing here.

I just added attached_node.module to the CVS repository.

There hasn't been much movement with document management lately from what I can tell. I've been working on it for quite a long time, and have changed my angle on it a few times by now. From the README:

Some code lifted from other modules, including image.module.

Purpose of this module:

Allow users to refer to other nodes from within the body or teaser of a node.
Provide a somewhat standard means of formatting the link to such nodes.
Allow user to customize position and attributes of this link/reference.

This is implemented for the most part as an output filter.

The most popular use case for document management in this crowd seems to be
attaching images to stories and blog entries. Arguments have gone round and
round about what is the best way to do this, and in the process of trying to
figure out what will make the most people happy, I have come to a compromise.

I originally designed a relational database model for managing attached nodes
and all of the maintenance code that goes with it. After much thought, and
coming across the filter that the image module uses, it occurred to me that
perhapse the best solution was the simplest one: use meta tags.

I took the concept that the image module used for tag format and made it a bit
more generalized. The format currently is of the form:

[node:NID, align="center", height="50", title="look at this stupid article"]

I haven't seen a clear set of features that the document management discussion is referencing, nor have I seen a clear strategy . The basic feature request that I've seen discussed is the ability to "attach" files/nodes to a node. I believe that is covered in the feature set listed below. I will lay out a high level proposal for adding robust document management to Drupal core, and you shoot holes in it. Sound fun? For today, I will list out a feature set to discuss. Later, resolution of these features will be discussed.

Features that a basic document management system has:
1. Ability to add documents to the system.
2. Ability to store those documents.
3. Ability to retrieve those documents that have been added.
(if it sounds like I'm stating the obvious, you are accurate)
...adding complexity...
4. Allowing multiple methods of adding documents to the system.
5. Associating documents with other documents (file attachments).
6. Associating meta-data with documents (taxonomy, owner, etc).
7. Searching for documents.
...even more complexity...
8. Maintaining documents in a context-sensitive way (specific node type, location, etc.. and a generic hook_node_create($data) hook).
9. Representing/rendering documents in an abbreviated way (mini-preview, thumbnail, theme_thumb_view(..), etc).
10. Using document content and meta-data as search key indexes.
11. Using an event model/triggering system to filter incoming and outgoing files (e.g. hook_new_file($node), hook_render_file($node)). This could also be used for input content filtering as well as virus cleansing.