Sunday, September 10, 2017

Accounting report

New report lino_xl.lib.ledger.AccountingReport replaces the Situation (which was similar but based on dates and without checkboxes for excluding parts of the report).

API change : I replaced get_parameter_fields(**fields) –> fields by setup_parameters(parameters) –> None because in the old API it was not possible to have lino.core.utils.ParameterPanel.get_title_tags().

Piwigo versus Google

I read Jason Baker’s posting 9 open source alternatives to Picasa (from May 2016), and then gave Piwigo a try. I opened a 30-day free trial account at https://vigalakant.piwigo.com/ and uploaded some photos from a yesterday’s concert in Vigala church. I wrote a short article on our village blog, with two of these photos. I uploaded the same photos also to Google.

The disadvantages of Piwigo versus Google are very visible:

• Piwigo costs money. A hosting plan at piwigo.com would cost us 300€/year (according to their tariff). And soon we would have more than 50 GB.

• People would need to register an account on our site in order to write comments or upload photos

• Not sure whether it is possible to upload photos from a mobile phone.

The advantages of Piwigo versus Google are very abstract: We would not depend on Google. We would not even depend on Piwigo.com because we could decide at any time to set up and run our own server.

Okay it is clear that Piwigo has no chance against Google here in Vigala. If I’d suggest a solution using Piwigo for our village photo collection, my friends here would ask why I want them to use such a system instead of the “free” Google system. And I guess that in Eupen it wouldn’t be different. Normal people just prefer to rely on Google or Facebook because that gives them all they need. “We want free beer, we don’t need no free speach.”