all_pic: Find, add and arrange images in the Write tab

giz · 2025-08-16 03:54:25

In the Write panel, find and add images to the Article Image field or any specified custom field.
The default Images panel opens in a SideView, providing full upload, edit and search capabilities.
Build gallery shortcodes for insertion into any textarea.
Thumbnails can be rearranged and moved to other groups via dragging.
Thumbnails adjust their size according to the number of their siblings.

I regularly use more than the Article image field to specify images in my projects, and displaying preview thumbs for each field is helpful for content editors (particularly the more visually-oriented ones). Large gallery <txp::shortcodes /> for displaying images in the body field often require fiddly edits to the order of the specified ids, each requiring a ‘Save’ and then a subsequent ‘View’ or reload of the public page.

all_pic helps alleviate these issues.

The plugin defers the search and selection of images to the familiar Images tab, and displays thumbnail galleries for each grouping in the Write tab. Thumbnails can be reordered within a group (including shortcode previews), or be dragged to another group altogether.

Find all_pic.zip (v0.1beta) and a full overview on GitHub.

Bloke · 2025-08-16 08:34:44

Crikey, you have been busy! I’ll check this out, thank you. I’m building a site for someone right now that needs slick image handling.

jakob · 2025-08-17 07:33:26

Cool! I’m pushed for time right now but will give it a roll soon.

giz · 2025-08-17 17:20:16

I’m about to trial it on the Artedomus website, where a couple of content editors pimp images en-masse regularly in their articles (typical article).

Both all_pic and all_sideview came about through a request to see what I could do about improving staff workflow / making the interface more ‘visual’.

I have further plans to incorporate mini-short code galleries alongside their shortcode counterparts in the body field, but this may be asking too much…

bashirnoori · 2025-12-20 23:55:37

Great Job !
I noticed this plugin that improves image handling in the Write article tab, and it looks very promising.

I hope this plugin can be further improved, or that similar functionality could be considered for the Textpattern core. Ideally, it would allow users to easily search existing images or upload new ones directly while writing an article.

When I train clients to manage their websites, image management during article writing is one of the most common questions. Many users are used to the simplicity of WordPress media, where adding images to a post is very straightforward.

Improving this area would greatly help usability, especially for non-technical users.

Bloke · 2025-12-21 00:14:22

bashirnoori wrote #341871:

Ideally, it would allow users to easily search existing images or upload new ones directly while writing an article.

Not to detract from giz’s excellent work on taking image handling to the next level, but the com_article_image plugin does most of what you ask already, in some form or another:

Drag image(s) from computer or the web browser to the article image field to attach them when article saved (or browse for them on your device).
Rearrange (drag n drop) image order (or swap ID list order by hand).
Delete image(s) from article image set.
Search for images already uploaded and click to attach either individual images or all images (after removing ones you don’t want) to the article.
Search for images that don’t match your term, and attach them as above.
Drag images to body/excerpt to upload and insert as a (custom-defined) tag or shortcode.
Image search can be performed on any nominated field (id, name, alt, caption, …).

giz · 2025-12-21 16:19:03

bashirnoori wrote #341871:

Great Job !

Thanks, Bashir.

Watch this space. I’m currently finalising an update to the plugin that includes:

preview galleries for any shortcode within the body field
drag and drop a thumb from the source list to any gallery
new layout for the source list so more thumbs are visible without scrolling.

giz · Yesterday 20:41:19

all_pic has been used intensively by staff-writers for a few months now; no complaints :)

I spent many hours converting a few hundred <txp:images id="a shitload of ids" form="images" etc /> snippets into <txp::gallery id="a shitload of ids" />. Tedious, but it ultimately resulted in improvements to all_pic:

An answer to ‘how can I see what these shortcodes represent?’
Adding the ability to drag an image from the SideView iframe into the parent document
Optimising SideView so that more thumbs are visible with less scrolling

I couldn’t get the zip installer to work (zip -r all_pic.zip . -x '.*' -x '__MACOSX', no resource forks but 4.9-dev complains about a malformed plugin), so an old-school manual install into plugins/ is required.

bici · Yesterday 21:44:53

giz wrote #341954:

all_pic has been used intensively by staff-writers for a few months now; no complaints :)

An answer to ‘how can I see what these shortcodes represent?’

Adding the ability to drag an image from the SideView iframe into the parent document

Optimising SideView so that more thumbs are visible with less scrolling

I couldn’t get the zip installer to work (zip -r all_pic.zip . -x '.*' -x '__MACOSX', no resource forks but 4.9-dev complains about a malformed plugin), so an old-school manual install into plugins/ is required.

the Folder all_pic-main contains a number of files :

textpack.txp
README.md
README.html
manifest.json
help.textile
help.html
allPic.webp
all_pic.scss
all_pic.php
all_pic.js
all_pic.css
.gitignore
.gitattributes

how/what do we install? I zipped the folder but TxP Plugin installer didn’t like it.

wet · Today 07:05:43

giz wrote #341954:

I couldn’t get the zip installer to work (zip -r all_pic.zip . -x '.*' -x '__MACOSX', no resource forks but 4.9-dev complains about a malformed plugin), so an old-school manual install into plugins/ is required.

Similar issues happened to me back then. But it went well in the end, thanks to this script-fu. HTH.

jakob · Today 13:18:21

wet’s solution is (I believe) windows only.

On the mac I have an automator action to do this, and it worked with a slightly cleaned up version of your folder. In automator (which comes with macOS), create a new automator action, choose “application” as type, then search for “shell script” and add that action. Enter the following in the text field:

while read -r p; do
zip -d "$p" __MACOSX/\* || true
zip -d "$p" \*/.DS_Store || true
done

Then choose “Save…”, give your app a name and save it somewhere handy, like your desktop. Make sure you have “application” as the chosen type in the save dialog and you’ll get a ready-to-use standalone app that performs the action.

Tip 1: You can change its icon by opening the app properties in the finder and dropping an icon of your own into the icon in the top-left corner of the properties window.
Tip 2: You can additionally or alternatively make this into a finder action rather than a standalone app.

I use this in general to clean zips I send via mail so that windows users don’t end up with the mac resource fork.

General usage:

Use the regular finder zip / compress option to create your zip as usual.
Drop that zip on your newly-made app to clean it.

For all_pic, I …

downloaded the all_pic-main folder from the git repo, removed the .gitignore, .gitattributes, readme docs, scss, webp and help.html files. Command + Shift + dot toggles hidden files in the finder.
renamed the folder all_pic, then used the finder compress / zip command (right-click on folder)
dropped the resulting zip on the zipcleaner app

The result you can download here

wet · Today 13:54:04

jakob wrote #341959:

wet’s solution is (I believe) windows only.

True, the script is Windows-only.

But: The relevant part of this repo is IMHO the attempted documentation of the plugin’s ZIP file layout Textpattern expects¹.

Any developer capable of writing a Textpattern plugin would probably be able to incorporate this into her preferred scripting and zipping toolchain.

¹ The powers that be might want to steal this findings, adapt to reality, and engrave them somewhere over there.

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#1 2025-08-16 03:54:25