Problem when adding images

[davlind]

Hi, I am new to the forum, and I have scanned the subjects for this problem, and maybe it is my fault and not a problem, but in many circumstances when I add a second photo to an individual I receive an message the the Image was not added, and in the listbox the image is not there, but to save the edit mode of the person there is an index list error and I must cancel the edit.
Sometimes, if I restart Ahnanblatt, the image is there for the person. My question is if this is a problem or I have made a fault. I use subdirectories for the images, maybe 5 subdirectories in the filepath, also I use "long" names for the directories and images, e.g. John smith first spouse of mary smith.jpg. I am wondering if the filepath or filename is creating a problem, that is too long in the stringfield or invalid characters in the names. Obviously, these names are acceptable to Windows, but maybe there is an issue in the code in Ahnanblatt.
I appreciate if anyone can point me in the right direction. Thanks.

[Mathemagician]

davlind,

Welcome to the Ahnenblatt English forum! Not much activity here (compared to the German forum), but we "struggle along". I see by your flag, you are in Australia - I have a son there! I hope you have discovered my English manual (a work in progress).

You have raised an issue which I believe is real! In the past, I encountered a situation similar to yours (I forget the exact behaviour) where I could not add additional images. I searched extensively in the German forum (using Google translate) and did find someone else with a similar problem (in the past) - Dirk's answer at the time was something like "cannot duplicate, send me the images", etc.

Further experimentation resulted in the following:

• most images could be added, but
• certain images (JPEG/JPG format) would always cause an error

I meant to save the offending image(s) for further examination, but did not, at the time. I believe there is some peculiarity in the jpg format which Ahnenblatt could not handle, but still allowed those images to be viewed, etc. (like normal JPEGs) by other applications. This could be something related to internal EXIF tags, even - I think Ahnenblatt may read some tags.

I did discover a "work-around", however, as follows:

1. view the image in Windows' native viewer (Picture and Fax viewer, on XP) - just double-click jpg image
2. from within viewer, click the "Copy to" button, and save the image back on itself. Make backups first, just in case!

Another method would be just to load the image into your favourite image editor, and re-save it. Both these methods seem to fix the "structure problem" with certain jpegs, but I can't say now what the underlying problem is. In the future, I will attack this again and post something to Dirk when I figure out what's going on.

Hopefully, my "work-around" may allow you to add those images!

[davlind]

Thanks Allen,

Thank you for your welcome and I hyope your son is enjoying himself here, I am located in Melbourne, so if your son is in Melbourne he has chosen well

No I have not seen your manual, yet, I am relatively new to this product but I will certainly look at your manual.

Your solution has worked very well and you are right it appears to be the format of the jpeg and I will make some experiments with the formats of downloading these images from the internet. Most of my images are sourced from the internet and using Firefox as the browser, but I think that it is the format of the image on the page that has the problem. If I have time I will look at the file header and see which tag may create the problem in Ahnanblatt.

For now, thank you for your help and solution
regards
David

[Mathemagician]

David,

Thanks for the reply - glad my trick worked! That confirms my theory. If you get a moment, could you send me a couple of those bogus images (if you kept them), that will save me the trouble of finding some at my end. I would like to have a look at the tags/format also. You can just attach them to a short email (Mathemagician@shaw.ca). If you didn't keep them, don't worry; I can find some in my "collection".

My son and his family (including 2 of my grandkids!) live in Avalon, a small community north of Sydney - Northern beaches area, near Newport. I've been there twice, but the trip is brutal (15-1/2 hours non-stop from Vancouver), so I don't when when I'll be back. He moved there 15 (?) years ago, or so and now has Australian citizenship.

The "WWW" button on my post will lead you right to the manual, etc. It is a bit out of date, but useful, nonetheless. I am back working on it to try to complete the "incomplete" pages, etc. Some of the "incomplete" pages have German->English translations (Google Translate) at the bottom, for now.

[Marcus]

There is at least a 2nd issue with big image files, which throws the "list index" error. But neither could be tracked down by Dirk, since it could never be duplicated. I wouldn't think that it is just an "tag"-problem in this case - it may be more of a slightly unexpected "format-tweak", since the jpg-documentation seems to offer some interpretation (and as far as I know, Dirk uses some 3rd party code for that) for developers.
Marcus

[davlind]

Hi Allen,

I have sent you two images via the email. They create the problem in Ahnanblatt, but not as serious as other images, but I have converted the images that have created problems. If I find another image that creates a more significant problem I will let you know. In the mean time I will also investigate the format of these jpegs.

I am glad that your son and his family have settled well here, but I can understand it is very far away from you. But a flight 15.5 hours is not bad, my grandkids are in London, on a good day it is a 26 hour flight.

Also, I have downloaded your English version of documentation, thank you for this. I will have read of it shortly.

Marcus,

I think I read somewhere that Ahnanblatt was written in Delphi, and if that is the case i think I know the 3rd party module that you are referring because I have used this module in a few delphi projects and I had to tweak some jpegs also.

regards
David

[Mathemagician]

Marcus,

David has kindly sent me 2 images which cause the "index" error. The images appear to be fine, when viewed in Windows, but adding them to Ahnenblatt (to a person's data) causes the error (original image gets trashed, only 1 image can be added, error when trying to click OK/checkmark).

I will try to figure out (in the future) what exactly is the structure that is causing the problem and post my results (for Dirk). I know this issue will appear with other users...

P.S. Work on the English Language/Help files is progressing again; more on that as it develops further.

[Marcus]

Hi Allen,

don't put to much work in it. Dirk found the (or at least one) error with the jpg-images yesterday (similiar problem in the german forum) after another user send him a picture with which he was able to track it down.
So maybe you should first send him this picture too (refereng to the just solved jpg-problem) and ask if this works too now or if you should test some more (or maybe he'll detect another bug/missing feature).
Marcus