Altyr on Zap shared a comment of this post/conversation

Tue, 17 Aug 2021 21:23:26 -0400 from hubzilla

emaxmax wrote the following post Tue, 17 Aug 2021 21:23:23 -0400

SVG images

Hello

Reading the following post I tried to upload an SVG image on #Hubzilla and it fails. Is SVG supported? Is it a bug from my instances (tested on my 2 clones)?

Rysiekúr Memesson wrote the following post Tue, 17 Aug 2021 20:10:05 -0400

What is it with fedi server software (looking at you, @Mastodon and @pixelfed ) not accepting SVG image uploads?..

#Fediverse

Altyr on Zap

Tue, 17 Aug 2021 21:27:51 -0400 from Free to be Social

No support on #Zap neither.

NullSpaceOddity

Tue, 17 Aug 2021 23:06:36 -0400 from hubzilla

It fails to upload, or fails to create a thumbnail? There is an option in the hub Admin->Security settings to allow/disallow SVG thumbnails due to the security risk they pose.

mike

Tue, 17 Aug 2021 23:14:30 -0400 from platypus

> No support on #Zap neither.

Works for me (both Hubzilla and Zap). We even allow inline SVG drawings using bbcode but these don't federate easily. We don't show them at all in photo albums, only as uploads into messages or as uploaded files in your cloud storage.

SVGs can contain malicious code and need to be purified. As a result many projects reject them outright.

Altyr on Zap

Wed, 18 Aug 2021 04:06:15 -0400 from Free to be Social

I go to the photos page, I click to add a new photo, I create a publication where I mentioned @NullSpaceOddity & @Mike Macgirvin, and I tagged #Hubzilla, I browse my computer to find the SVG image and validate.
I see the uploading progress bar, then the page redirects to the photos page, where the new image is missing.
On my channel: no publication.

mike

Wed, 18 Aug 2021 04:33:12 -0400 from platypus

Right. That's what I said.

> We don't show them at all in photo albums, only as uploads into messages or as uploaded files in your cloud storage.

>> I go to the photos page, I click to add a new photo...

Einer von Vielen

Wed, 18 Aug 2021 04:50:02 -0400 from streams

@Mike Macgirvin please could you give an example how to include inline SVG drawings using bbcode.

Example:

<svg height="150" width="500"><ellipse cx="240" cy="100" rx="220" ry="30" style="fill:purple" /><ellipse cx="220" cy="70" rx="190" ry="20" style="fill:lime" /><ellipse cx="210" cy="45" rx="170" ry="15" style="fill:yellow" />
  Sorry, your browser does not support inline SVG.
</svg>

mike

Wed, 18 Aug 2021 05:03:44 -0400 from platypus

Change all the angle brackets to square brackets and remove the self-closing tag slashes.

Just tried it here and it didn't render. I'm fairly sure I submitted that patch but it was a year or two ago. Maybe I overlooked it on Hubzilla.

mike

Wed, 18 Aug 2021 05:09:52 -0400 from platypus

Nope, the code is there. Don't remove the slashes.

Einer von Vielen

Wed, 18 Aug 2021 05:37:35 -0400 from streams

Thanks @Mike Macgirvin

emaxmax

Wed, 18 Aug 2021 11:57:37 -0400 from hubzilla

It fails to upload, or fails to create a thumbnail?

It fails to create the publication, and to appear in the photos folder (with or without thumbnails).
And it fails without any error message.

SVGs can contain malicious code and need to be purified.

Do you have a pointer to explain how stripping scripts isnâ€™t enought to clean itÂ ?

Mario Vavti

Wed, 18 Aug 2021 12:10:39 -0400 from hubzilla

@emaxmax the photos app does not handle .svg files. The files app does. If you upload a .svg into a post it will be rendered inline by default:

Nolan

Sun, 22 Aug 2021 17:44:21 -0400 from hubzilla

So that's an UX flaw? (Lack of error message when uploading a SVG from photos app)

mike

Fri, 27 Aug 2021 00:02:37 -0400 from platypus

I don't consider it a flaw. It's true that an SVG is an image. However it is not a photo. That's the same reason we also don't show videos and icon files in your photo albums. You can upload anything on that page and the upload should succeed. You can upload an Excel spreadsheet if you want. We still upload them and stored them in your Files. However, If we don't consider them to be photos they won't show up in the Photos app.

Now that I've explained the philosophy I should mention the fine print. You can also upload a .webp photo and there's a good chance it won't show up on your photos page either. You can call this a bug if you want, but the bug isn't ours. The various image processing libraries we use don't have consistent wepb support at this time and we can't change this. When they all support this format, they'll start showing up in your photo albums.

Altyr

Fri, 27 Aug 2021 03:23:21 -0400 from hubzilla

So the philosophy is that you can upload anything from the photo app form, even if it's not a picture? As an advanced user I can get it, but do you understand that for many average users this is not intuitive?

But I got another point, which might be a bug: when I upload a non-image file from the photo app, and I check the box to create a post, no post is created. What do you think?

mike

Fri, 27 Aug 2021 05:24:24 -0400 from platypus

It's complicated.

File upload forms often have an "accept" parameter which lets you limit what the file chooser picks. We can't use that method because many modern phones provide photos that will exhaust memory.

So we use a library to upload the file in chunks.

This library has a similar parameter for restricting what files to accept in the file picker. The problem is we can't use this parameter, because it requires pulling in a number of jquery-UI elements that conflict with our theme and looks like dung and we can't over-ride it.

There is a script on the internet that allows you to use this library without the additional UI elements by rejecting files after they've been selected by the file picker.
This is more user hostile than accepting anything and uploading it anyway. So that's what we did.

I suppose we could resize the file on the client before we upload it. There's a library to do that and we have it installed. It requires the same jquery-UI components that prevented us from using accept types in the library's file picker.

Now we get to the attached post. It is attached to photos. But you didn't upload a photo. Should we post it anyway with no photo?

What would you do?

Altyr

Fri, 27 Aug 2021 06:05:07 -0400 from hubzilla

Post it with a link to the uploaded file?

Or

Send an error message "you post wasn't published because the uploaded file is not a photo".

Malendur

Fri, 27 Aug 2021 06:09:24 -0400 from hubzilla

@Mike Macgirvin: you can check server-side if the uploaded file is a picture.
What about a notification, after upload, when the file is not a picture: "Upload successful. Yet, since this file is not a picture, it won't appear in the gallery."

oRx-Qx pirateradio

Fri, 27 Aug 2021 12:49:28 -0400 from hubzilla

There is more places and more frequently used functions where nothing happens without notification in case of error. Maybe some issue thread with a list of them would be helpful to make Hubzilla more talkative some day.

mike

Fri, 27 Aug 2021 19:00:42 -0400 from platypus

As I said earlier, the file was uploaded. It doesn't show up on the photos page and no "photo" activity sent because it isn't a photo. In my view, no error occurred. I guess we have a different interpretation of what constitutes an error and what constitutes usability.

This actually happens in the real world because somebody does a ctrl-a in the file picker and uploads everything, including the thumbs-db. Or if it's from their device's DCIM folder, it automatically includes a video or three. Since this is a general purpose cloud storage system, this is all permitted and these are stored correctly. The "photo" activity will be attached to every photo. It won't be attached to files that aren't photos, because they aren't photos. We could also change the text to say "send a photo activity for this upload if it's a photo". This would provide a hint that we aren't restricting your uploads to only the 3 or 4 major photo types.

If you insist on calling this an error, go ahead and file an issue or volunteer to fix it. I think it would only make the software more user hostile to reject the files or get overly chatty about it.

I'm not trying to argue - just reflecting that we do have different points of view. Hubzilla is on its own path and I shouldn't even get involved.

I've reflected that there are strong opinions about this, so what I plan to do about it in the Zap family is to alter the UI to more closely reflect the reality that the photos and files apps are merely different views of the same space. One of them is more tailored to working with photos, since that's the thing more people share and provides slightly different options. This also opens the door to providing a Videos app and an Audio/Podcast app in the future; which are specifically tailored to working with those media types.

For instance - (as a very simple example) at the top of every photo folder provide a button to 'view files' and at the top of every file folder a similar button to 'view photos'. This will toggle the view accordingly. And grudgingly I will provide an alert "spreadhseet.xls: Unsupported photo type. Saved as file." or "flowers.jpg: Unsupported video type. Saved as photo." if somebody forgets which app/view they're using.

Mario Vavti

Sat, 28 Aug 2021 03:27:03 -0400 from hubzilla

For Hubzilla i'd suggest to move file management actions away from photos completely and leave that to files which is superior in this regard anyway. On the long term we should probably ditch the photos app completely and implement comments and reactions on photos into the gallery.

Witcraft (inactive)

Sat, 28 Aug 2021 03:55:07 -0400 from hubzilla

Sounds good. E.g. the workflow to delete a photo is quite cumbersome in photos (open photo => edit photo => delete photo instead of a direct delete function from overview). However, deleting a photo is a typical organizing function of many gallery apps (which I think makes sense).

Nolan

Sat, 28 Aug 2021 04:51:46 -0400 from hubzilla

For Hubzilla i'd suggest to move file management actions away from photos completely and leave that to files which is superior in this regard anyway.

Would it be possible to create a publication from this upload form?

Mario Vavti

Sat, 28 Aug 2021 05:26:51 -0400 last edited: Sat, 28 Aug 2021 05:55:59 -0400 from hubzilla

@Nolan

Would it be possible to create a publication from this upload form?

Currently a simple note saying xxx shared file xx with you is being sent. This could be extended of course.