# JAlbum Tools

JAlbum Tools are extensions to the functionality of JAlbum. They can be launched from the Tools menu or from the command line (the -runTool switch). A "Tool" is actually a "BeanShell script" that is put in the tools directory of the JAlbum install directory. They get their names from their file name and are therefore not translated. Hopefully people will contribute with more tools as time goes by. Here are the existing tools so far:

- Add JPEG comment -Copy JPEG file comments from JPEG images and add them to the comments.properties file. Existing comments are not touched. JAlbum will gradually move away from storing comments in the JPEG section of files. This Tool helps in that transition (it will store comments directly in image files in the future too, but in a more standardized way).
- Calculate album size -Calculate the sizes of all files under the album directory. This Tool is handy to estimate space needed before uploading an album.
- Clear user defined variables -Clear any variables defined in the Advanced->User variables section of JAlbum. These variables override any variables defined by JAlbum. If JAlbum isn't behaving as expected, this Tool may come in handy.
- Convert upper case to lower case -Some users are having trouble publishing files with uppercase naming. This Tool renames all files to lower case.
- Exctract comments -Feed the image directory a directory containing html files with comments. This Tool will extract the comments and put them in a comments.properties file.
- Perform garbage collection -Reclaim unreferenced memory. Helpful as a debugging aid when tracking memory leaks etc.
- Replace spaces with underscores -This Tool replaces spaces in filenames of original images with underscores (to ease publishing to some ftp servers).
- Sample Tool -Use this one as base for your own Tools
- Reset file date to camera date -Go through all images specified in the image directory (and its subdirectories) and reset the file date to the EXIF camera date as written by the camera. JAlbum orders images after file date, not camera date, so running this tool if a file has been touched can be helpful in order to get the image ordered chronologically again.
- Server mode -This tool makes JAlbum monitor changes under the image directory and trigger automatic album updates. As soon as a file is added, updated or removed under the image directory, a Make album operation is triggered. Then JAlbum returns to again monitor changes. (This tool can preferrably run from the command line on a server) Note, for proper operation, the output directory must NOT be under the image directory, otherwise an infinite album building loop will occur! To exit server mode, just close the server mode window.
- Show supported file types -List file types that JAlbum recognizes. Helpful in order to see if the ImageIO plug in from Sun is installed correctly (should then include TIFF and JPEG 2000 file types).