On 17 September 2012 22:16, Rob Weir <[email protected]> wrote: > On Thu, Aug 30, 2012 at 4:51 AM, Ian Lynch <[email protected]> wrote: >> I'm organising the Open clipart library into categories. We could use >> this then as a useful resource to complement AOO. Any thoughts about >> the best way to implement making the categorised library available to >> the community? >> > > Taxonomies are limiting, especially if a given clipart can live in > only one place. Tagging is more flexible. And searching is even more > so. > > I noticed they have a REST API for searching OCAL, which is based on > text queries, e.g.: > > http://openclipart.org/api/search/?query=trombone&page=1 > > So one option might be to have a smaller, curated set of > top-quality/most-commonly-used clipart pre-included in the install, > but then also have an in-product interface for searching the complete > online collection. Could also allow searching of other public domain > image sources, including Flickr Common, Wikipedia, etc.
That is exactly what I had in mind. For none technical users, seeing some images in the gallery on installation provides confidence apart from anything else. Few casual users will know how to use the search facilities on OCAL and many would not even know what OCAL was. It really has to be intuitive and simple for the most limited end users :-). The quickest and simplest start is to provide a simple set on install. Then look at adding search to the user interface. Snag I'm thinking about at the moment is that ideally the curated included set would be vectors but most are in .svg not .odg format so we lose the editing which is a key reason to have them as vectors. We could just use png but that's not ideal. Longer term it would be better for AOO to support svg fully, but that is a big job. -- Ian Ofqual Accredited IT Qualifications (The Schools ITQ) www.theINGOTs.org +44 (0)1827 305940 The Learning Machine Limited, Reg Office, 36 Ashby Road, Tamworth, Staffordshire, B79 8AQ. Reg No: 05560797, Registered in England and Wales.
