What is a "cyclic" script?

What I would do (well, what I do), is generate new, or changed, picture albums if something changes. I can just call my build script and it'll figure out whether there are new pictures, or modified options (descriptions, cropping parameters, whatever) to pictures, and it (re)builds the corresponding html pages, thumbnails, preview, and display size images, adjusting the navigation pages if necessary. Without parameters, it just checks all, but I can also tell it to check certain albums, or even certain images.

Now, I do this by hand because I copy the images by hand from my camera to the machine. But having it trigger from the arrival of an email would be simple (takes, oh, one line to call an external program in about any language, doesn't it?).

I mean, if I have pictures, pic1, pic2, pic3 and pic4, and they have thumbnails th1, th2, th3 and th4, and preview images prev1, prev2, prev3, and prev4, and I'm using html pages pag1, pag2, pag3, and pag4, then that's fairly static, isn't? It's not something you couldn't determine until someone wants to see pic1 or pic2? And it's not going to change if pic5 arrives.

And as an additional benefit, I can distribute an album (which in my setup is contained in a directory tree), be it by sending someone a tar or a zip file, or to burn it on CD or putting it on a memory stick, by just (recursively) copying the directory. Nothing special required for the receiver. No webserver needed. No OS dependency.

In reply to Re^4: Global program flow by Anonymous Monk
in thread Global program flow by Mr. Mental

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