How to manage the image-output / image-tools node conflict (split topic)

[Steve-Mcl]

Hi @BartButenaers / @dceejay , so as discussed, I have been evaluating both image viewer nodes in both contribs -image-tools and -image-output with a view to removing the built in viewer in favour of the stand alone node.

Rough comparison...

• image-output uses jimp-compact, image-tools uses jimp

  • I might be able to align with this lib but I am concerned the dev might not stay up to date with base jimp lib - thoughts?

• -image-tools does not have an output enable button

• -image-output has no pass though (no output pin), (-image-tools has a pass though for inline / chained operations (output pin))

  • this was introduced to reduce msg cloning (i.e. msg passes straight through instead of branching off)

• -image-output doesn't work with a full data URL (spec / mdn) e.g. data:[<mediatype>][;base64],<data>

  • however, before displaying the image data in the viewer, it goes on to assume the base64 data will be png and prepends it (regardless of type) - this causes issues with regular Image URLs and Data URLs (see images below)

• -image-tools viewer accepts everything image-output does + filename + Image URL + (complete) data URLs

  • -image-tools also infers actual image data type by 1st 5 chars of data portion if mime type is missing

• image-output resizes image at server-side to reduce traffic back to node-red editor

These are partly the reasons I initially added the viewer (I'll try to find original conversation for reference - if necessary) but mostly the image-output did not have Jimp as a dependency at the time of development - and seemed a lot to ask devs to add

Demo...

Here's a demo to try and put the above words into a picture...
note the deliberate typo in the image - base62

What are your thoughts on aligning our 2 viewer nodes in order for me to consider removing the internal viewer?

NOTES

I have modified the original image viewer node to make this demo work (some bug fixes in image-tools viewer I happily happened upon!) + there was another conflict I had to resolve before I could test these side-by-side (both image viewers subscribed to the same comm (RED.comms.subscribe('image'...) so events were occurring twice at client side.

Image URL issue...

Data URL issue...