From Canon CR2 Raw files to the Web

A potentially interesting artefact of me playing around with a Canon DSLR is that libferris now has some initial support for CR2 "raw" files. Complements of course go to the dcraw library and tools for the heavy lifting. The upshot is that ferriscp ~/cam/foo.CR2 flickr://me/upload now works as expected. Once I update my maemo build, this should also let me use an n900 with 3G to upload from RAW while on the move.

I need to include stuff for ICC profiles and the like but at least the Web services get what they expect and everything runs smoothly, and it will for you too next release (TM). I really should look into mounting the kipi plugins as a filesystem sometime, they offer some awesome Web import/export functionality, ripe for a filesystem I tell's ya.

I still need to add "rgba-32bpp" metadata support for CR2 files. As you can imagine from the name, if you read this metadata for a jpeg, png or other supported image file, libferris decodes the image to 32 bit RGBA byte values for you. It might also be interesting to create another "file as filesystem" design where a bunch of virtual files are offered to see the small thumbnail, the roughly 1080p sized thumbnail or the ICC corrected rendering of the CR2 and others. Such virtual files are really handy for drag and drop to other filesystems ;)

I might hunt around for some Nikon raw files to add support for those too at some point. Though there is nothing like having a camera generating files to make you want to make your software support those files.

Libferris and flickr, vimeo, facebook etc.

If you don't read Linux Format, issue 133 and 132 have some good material on how to mount web services as filesystems using libferris.

Them pesky web serviceses...

It always stuck me as a little odd that you have specific applications to upload to flickr, another little app with a cute interface for throwing video files at webserviceY etc. I should also mention that all of this is coming to the maemo build shortly... what better place to unlock web services than a tablet or phone, neh?

What ever happened to the unix philosophy, "everything is a file". Then you could just "cp" to flickr, write your facebook status in bash or C-x C-s your mood to facebook://status.

I added some support for the flickr API to ferris last year, and the recent 1.3.5 release expands that and adds more web service goodness. But, which of these nasty, closed source services should be supported? The answer: it doesn't matter, there just filesystems! Of course, I'd prefer to mount a FOSS, GNU, Free, Privacy respecting server, and who wouldn't.. but for some things you want to just cp to youtube and forget about it.

For facebook I have three objects at facebook:// level. A status file which is read/write, a recent directory which shows the feed of stuff your chums are up to, and a contacts directory with virtual vcard files for your pals. I even added in the profile picture of each friend into their v-vcard. Unfortunately facebook doesn't allow you to get phone number info through the web API, which is strange because you can just simulate a login and swipe it by screen scraping, but that's nasty T&C violating thinking neh?

The flickr API mounting should work, to some extent with any service offering that API. For example, 23hq offers free hosting which might appeal. The extensions in libferris 1.3.5 let you see your contacts in a directory, find images by photo ID, browse your photosets and images not yet in a photoset. If you look in your contacts directory, you'll see their photostream and favs as directories.

Note that the thumbnail image is available from flickr through libferris as 32bit RGBA decoded data, so a libferris client can graphically browse a flickr API photoset just as it can a digital camera mounted with libferris. The thumbail EA is the same. Of course, if you copy an image from flickr:// or 23hq:// libferris grabs the largest (or original) image from the site and supplies it to you. Feel the unlocking of captive data. Oh, and upload works as it did last year...

Finally, the mounting of Google docs and spreadsheets. This also has support for appending to plain text files, so you can redirect stdout to append to a google docs text file just as you can >> /tmp/foo.txt.

Spreadsheet mounting goes right down to the cell. So you can use google as a calculator from the command line if it tickles you...

$ export SPREAD=google://spreadsheets/smalltest1/Sheet1
$ echo 5  | ferris-redirect --ea b $SPREAD/9
$ echo 23 | ferris-redirect --ea c $SPREAD/9
$ echo -n "=sum(B9,C9)" | ferris-redirect --ea d $SPREAD/9
$ fcat -a d $SPREAD/9
28

And there are vimeo, youtube and others still needing mounting... but thats what 1.3.6 exists for right? Feel free to send in patches for your fav service! See plugins/context/facebook et al in the source.