Simple Machines Community Forum

SMF Development => Feature Requests => Topic started by: Symundo on January 12, 2023, 05:58:45 AM

Title: Pictures in topics
Post by: Symundo on January 12, 2023, 05:58:45 AM
Hello, would be a nice feature, if you allow pictures in text without URL but with data:image/png;base64, with following base64 converted png picture data, or another tag for other web picture types (gif or whatever)

Very helpful!

Or you can open a file browser and save content as file on server side and you use an internal url in text for the picture.

I do not think many people are able to save screenshots or other picture sources on a machine available from the web provider's server.
Title: Re: Pictures in topics
Post by: Aleksi "Lex" Kilpinen on January 12, 2023, 06:06:00 AM
I have a hard time imagining this to be as useful as you suggest. The pictures would directly take up space in the database and you would have no tools to easily measure how much, there would be no way to catalogue them or moderate them without going through all posts, and most general users would not know what to do with it.

If you want this, I would suggest a mod would be better.
Title: Re: Pictures in topics
Post by: Symundo on January 12, 2023, 07:47:31 AM
Hm, it would be easy. The images belong to an entry and simply have the same ID as the entry in the database and are counted internally with a second key. If a post is deleted, then so are the images with the same ID.

If you keep the images in a separate table, you can also simply check the data volume. Or you are saving pictures inside of a separate directory. Anyway.

In my case I am making a support forum for software, and the people often make screenshots to explain their problems. They use MS Teams as well, and there it is no problem to paste pictures in dialog, like you can do it in WhatsApp or other messengers as well. 

What mod you would suggest for this?
Title: Re: Pictures in topics
Post by: Steve on January 12, 2023, 07:53:45 AM
I can just about guarantee this won't be considered as a core feature for the reasons Lex indicated and for the lack of requests for it.

As for the mod, you'll need to request one here (https://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?board=79.0).
Title: Re: Pictures in topics
Post by: Symundo on January 12, 2023, 08:17:21 AM
It doesn't matter if you see it that way. My users definitely want it and grimace when they can't simply embed images without first booking web space with a web provider in order to upload an image there via FTP and address this image in the post. This is a procedure from 20 years ago.

I want to let my users pay for this service, and I can already see that without this comfort nobody of the companies will seriously join the forum. People are just used to it from Teams and WhatsApp. They provide screenshots and I give my answers on that basis.

"A picture is worth a thousand words." German proverb
Title: Re: Pictures in topics
Post by: Aleksi "Lex" Kilpinen on January 12, 2023, 09:30:07 AM
We do already have attachments, that are kept separate, and have unique IDs, and can be embedded in the text - like this FQQ_iM2XsAACdwa.jpg
So what you are asking for here
Quote from: Symundo on January 12, 2023, 05:58:45 AMOr you can open a file browser and save content as file on server side and you use an internal url in text for the picture.

I do not think many people are able to save screenshots or other picture sources on a machine available from the web provider's server.
We already have built in.

What I first understood you to suggest (before your edit) would be simply adding text inside the post body, that would need to be parsed as image data when presented. This is simply not how the posts were designed to work.
Title: Re: Pictures in topics
Post by: Sesquipedalian on January 13, 2023, 03:43:27 PM
Yes, what you are looking for is SMF's attachments feature. Using that, your users can attach files to their posts.