Spoejs version 0.01
===================

The basic idea of Spoejs is an image-oriented blog/journal.
Spoejs can be used not only for storing pictures, but also
for journaling of stories in a diary style. Or a combination
thereof.

There are web sites that allow you to upload one picture a
day, or that allow you a limit quota. What we are writing is
for larger volume picture collections. This project is geared
more toward people with home networks or who otherwise admin
their own personal servers.

We imagine the typical situation is a tech kid with his/her
own Linux server(s) at home installing spoejs and letting
family and friends post large picture collections from summer
BBQ's, ski trips, parties, vacations and so on.

Since we are imagining this to be used not only by the tech
kids themselves but also family and friends, this means that
it should be easy to use for non-tech people. We intend the
interface for uploading pictures, writing stories and
annotations to have a very low learning curve. For those that
need it, there'll also be basic photo editing options such as
rotation, cropping and adjusting brightness.

Our choice of technology is Perl and Mason. We write .pm
modules to control data, and write Mason code to embed data
into HTML. We use a few Apache features. We run a squid cache
in front of Apache for caching scaled pictures, etc. That way
we don't have to do much caching inside Mason, improving
performance.

Our data is stored as media and text files in the file system.
We have a format for text files that looks like xml, but is
easier to read and edit in a text editor. We have chosen this
so that it is indeed to hand edit and to tar up to move to a
different server if necessary. 

Visit http://spoejs.sf.net/ for additional information.

INSTALLATION

To install this module type the following:

   perl Makefile.PL
   make
   make test
   make install   <-- as root, of course!

DEPENDENCIES

This module requires these other modules and libraries:

	Archive::Tar;
	Archive::Zip;
	Bootstring;
	Carp::Assert;
	Data::Dumper;
	Date::Manip;
	ExtUtils::MakeMaker;
	File::Basename;
	File::Find;
	File::Path;
	File::Temp
	Image::Magick;
	integer
	LWP::UserAgent;
	Storable
	Test;
	utf8;
	warnings;


USAGE

Included in the distribution are basic html docs that should be
placed in your htdocs directory (or in the subdirectory of your
choosing) as well as test perl scripts which can be used by
placing them in your cgi-bin or other script-enabled directory.

COPYRIGHT AND LICENCE

This module is release under the Artistic License.

Copyright (C) 2004 snicki, mike, cangcang, boinger, & sauber