re-using attachments.

[ah.heng]

just an idea that came up, where we could access the attachments that we have made, and use them in other threads, rather than re-attaching them again.

make the attachment managers user-centric rather than thread-centric.

[Pontemonti]

That's a good idea. Someone should tell the vbulletin developers, because that should really be built-in into the forum system and not hacked in by us, IMHO. Maybe it's already possible in the latest version, or there is a plug-in for it...

Note that you can go to http://www.conceptart.org/forums/profile.php?do=editattachments to see your attachments. Far from perfect, but better than nothing...

[masque]

you can halfway do that now by placing the attachment id number between [ATTACH] tags (which is what the Attachment Manager does). but, this only shows as a link to the attachment -- it's not displayed inline.

i tried a number of variations on this but no luck -- i think there's some Attachment Manger magic that would need to be hacked to get the tagged ids working inline in any post.

[Ian Mack]

that's interesting though...being able to see the pics you've posted.

It would save space on their HD and as well...make the pictures more accessible for multiple threads.

[Anid Maro]

Hmm... interesting thought.

I dug around a bit to see if I can figure anything out.

Firstly, when you go directly to the attachment (http://www.conceptart.org/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=88514) and then try to check out the page source code, it is completely encoded.

For example, you get stuff like this:

xª^ÊÝ?±ÊùÑ/c“ü¬Ïæ‰{‹³žÝ§¨à—‰ôC‚éµ½ºñFl[6¬“]}

Another thing I've noticed is that when you look at the page info of a specific attachment it tells you that it is a jpeg image file. Furthermore, if you save the image file (or look at the attachments manager that Pontemonti mentioned) it retains the file name of the image.

The following text was made hard to read because I think the idea is crap now. Highlight it if you're really interested.

This tells me that, for example, when you go to a specific attachment (http://www.conceptart.org/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=88514), the page you go to is likely referring elsewhere for the image, instead of the image simply being embedded into the page code.

Now here is something interesting (sorry if this post seems disjointed, I'm typing as I try stuff).

With html coding, I was able to directly display an attachment with this line of code here:

<img src="http://www.conceptart.org/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=88513">

I'm using Firefox as my browser, by the way.

Since Firefox will display that link as an image, I'm backing out of my original theory that there the attachmentid was referring to another file (e.g. sbApple.jpg). Instead, I'm thinking that when you upload something as an attachment a new file is created that contains all of the image information (filename, image type, etc.). That would also explain why I just get garbage when I look at the page source.

In short, I'm now saying that I think when you go directly to an attachment (http://www.conceptart.org/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=88514), that is the image and not a referral to the image.

Anyhow, that's all I've got. Ideas I've got for the mods/scripters/coders/godsabove:

- If able, allow forum members to directly display attachments in posts other than the original post. It'd be convenient and save you guys some drive space.

- If able, find a way to keep the attachments from displaying outside of the ConceptArt forums. Wouldn't want anybody to abuse this wonderful service, would we?

[masque]

i had similar results, Anid, but HTML in posts is disabled, and there doesn't seem to be a vB code solution. i tried embedding the ATTACH-tagged id, and even the attachment's url, in other vB code tags (like IMG) but it was just ignored.

[Pontemonti]

The attachments are stored in a directory which you cannot access. The attachment page then sends you that image when you request it. Perhaps it would be possible to create a new tag that inserts this image (say, number would be converted to <img src="http://www.conceptart.org/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=number" />). I don't know how this would work with permissions though. I assume that the attachment.php page checks that you are allowed to view the image (that it was posted in a forum/thread you can see) before showing it to you, but I would have to check that first to be sure...