Saturday, August 9, 2014

Editing the Data ... Without Destroying It

Before getting into anything about edits, check out Google search 'valerie fraser artist' as she is all over the first page.  This comes from all the links and the sharing on Facebook, etc.  What would further this also is to come up with more keywords to describe her art.  Abstract is obvious but two or three solidly-descriptive others would be beneficial.  We want to tell people what differentiates this art, in general, from that by others.  The question to answer is what words help people know this is the art they want.  There's information like being aggressive or paints in the nude and maybe those are fun to know on Facebook but those aren't the types of words that would be helpful toward a business purpose.  Well, 'paints in the nude' might but this isn't that business.

(Ed:  many would say all art is hookin')

And many would agree!


Yesterday I concluded it would be better to make an editor for the Inventory file that knows all about the paintings.  The edit function throws up a list of the entries in the file (i.e. lists them by painting name) and each one has a pulldown for Edit, Delete, etc.  You can rename by the file by overtyping its name in the same window.

As a programmer with some experience, I know going into this that the Inventory file will get smashed by some mistake I make during the course of this.  Therefore, much as I don't want to do this, I will duplicate various files and test strictly on those.  (Duplicating files for testing is a nuisance and carries a risk of its own.)

(Ed:  you sound like a rabbit)

All systems programmers think like rabbits.  You have to anticipate all possible pathways a bear could use to eat you or your next experience will be digestion although it won't be you won't be doing the digesting.  Because ... as we all know ...  drum roll ... sometimes you get the bear and sometimes the bear gets you.

Know the bear.  Love the bear.  But try not to let him eat you.


Some considerations (mostly rhetorical as I have to decide for myself what makes the most sense from a systems view of it and that means doing things without anything breaking anything):

When she deletes a painting out of the Inventory, do I also delete it from the Images file to remove it altogether.  (Rather than deleting it, I would move it to an archive Images file but the question is the same.  Do it or not.)

The reason for leaving the actual Image alone is that maybe she wants it to be in the slideshow but doesn't want it to show up in the Inventory.  Who knows why should want that but maybe she does.

Maybe programmers are thinking, well, write an additional script for an explicit purge in the Images file.  In that way, Images will only vacate when she indicates specifically she wants that.  From this view, there is no question of deleting a corresponding entry (if any) from the Inventory file as it has to be removed because it would leave a broken link active if I do not (i.e. the link to the Image that no longer exists in the folder).

The third piece is the Sanity Checker and this has go to through the Images file cross-referencing each one with its representative entry in the Inventory file.  If no entry in the Inventory file then this Image is an orphan and is therefore 'insane' from the program's thinking.

With each of those pieces in place, there's only one left and that's a Restore function to put anything back if she decides she really didn't want to do that.


Oh, and I did get Chinese (simplified version, whatever that may be) and Arabic to display correctly on the site.  I did not make them permanent as that requires a command decision from the artist but, from what I've seen from Valerie and also Christina, they like the idea.  Nevertheless, I'll wait until I'm sure.  Spanish and English are spoken by an enormous number of people and I suppose but don't know that Chinese and Russian would be right after.  I've already reviewed potential political problems, emotional reactions, universality of art, etc so the only thing needed now is a decision on whether to do it.  I know for sure now that I definitely can.

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