Web interface: feature request: cdrom metadata files

[ewanuno]

cdrom images often have important info on the cover, or even associated manuals it would be very useful to have these files displayed in the web interface alongside the .iso and available for viewing directly in the browser.

for ease of implementation, i propose that a cdrom image lives in a folder with its associated images and text/pdf files which all have the same name as the image file.

e.g. : SuperMacintosh_multimediaCD_cdimage/

SuperMacintosh_multimediaCD.iso SuperMacintosh_multimediaCD_frontcover.png SuperMacintosh_multimediaCD_backcover.png SuperMacintosh_multimediaCD.pdf SuperMacintosh_multimediaCD.nfo SuperMacintosh_multimediaCD.txt

[rdmark]

@ewanuno Thanks for raising the improvement idea! I've been working on expanding the functionality of the Web UI, and want to consider the use case here.

The design philosophy behind the Web UI is something light-weight and HTML4 backwards-compatible that functions without unnecessary reliance on JavaScript (and compatible with Netscape 4). As such, I would strongly advise against introducing embedded images, since 68k Macs for instance will choke on them.

Is there any other kind of metadata beyond cover images and pdf files that would be helpful here? Textual metadata in nfo files?

[ewanuno]

my personal use case is sample cds in akai sampler format, these cds normally had a list of contents printed on the inlay card of the cd case.

my collection is all iso files with jpegs or pngs (or sometimes pdf) of the cd inlay or booklet. these are mostly not scene releases so they generally don't have .nfo files (maybe a handful out of more than a hundred have .nfo files) but .nfo files is definitely a good idea.

if inline images causes backward compatibility problems for old browsers then direct links to the image files would be ok. that would keep them accessible for people with modern browsers but not cause old browsers to choke on them.

perhaps a generic metadata folder for each iso image? the browser doesn't need to be able to read all these filetypes. There will be different filetypes for different kinds of cd rom images, i would expect games to have pdf manuals, warez to have serials and cracks, etc.

Cvictor and others are working on a sampler specific backend for rascsi, so perhaps my specific need are better addressed there, but it seems to me that a generic metadata facility would be useful for many users.

[rdmark]

This is not something we will add to the default Web UI, since the design philosophy is a very light weight web app that can run on any vintage computer/browser. Adding inline images is going to make it too heavy on very old systems.