In 2015, Tim G. L. Lyons released the Download Media addon Utilities tool.
At that time, the Gramps Media Object Editor did not allow adding a URL to an online file as a path. (To be more accurate, a URL could type in or pasted but the Editor OK button would be disabled.) However, Importing a GEDCOM with URL paths would work.
Tim was using Geni world tree and exporting GEDCOMs from it which included Media with URL paths. So he wrote a tool to harvest those Media objects to local storage… into the Relative path media folder. Then you had to fix the paths from URL to the local path.
This utility is “all or nothing”. There are no options or filtering.
Now that Gramps 6.0 accepts URLs for the media object’s path, this tool has wider application. And its functionality could be re-visited.
- a filtered subset of Media objects could be harvested (There are certain to be cases where it will be preferable to continue to use online files.)
- The utility could revise the path as files as successfully downloaded.
- It could call thumbnailer plugins for known mime-types of downloaded file
- It could use the browser cache to temprarily download image media and use the thumbnailer (leaving the file online but making a better Preview in the Gramps GUI)
The interface for the new URL capability is still a bit awkward. (You cannot “Add” a new Media Object with a URL path. But can Edit a URL into an existing Media Object. So there’s an extraneous step of Adding a placeholder object first.)
Nick did a private beta of a Selenium-based thumbnailer plugin that generates webpage Preview thumbnails. Its prerequisites are VERY variable. Different browsers require different selenium drivers for different OSes. And the Selenium driver didn’t care for websites that were running an insecure protocol. So that thumbnailer plugin might need to be an Expert audience addon. But it would also be attractive to the general public. That could cause it to become a huge black hole for support. There are simply too many browser/OS combinations.
The 6.0 wiki Media section has not been revised for URL paths. So we need some hardy explorers to volunteer. Posting to this thread about your experiences will help our WikiContributors.