Unknown file types

Sometimes you have a file type that Greenstone doesn't recognise. These can be added into a collection using UnknownPlugin.

UnknownPlugin is a simple plugin for importing files in formats that Greenstone doesn't know anything about. A dummy document will be created for every such file, and the file itself will be passed to Greenstone as the "associated file" of the document.

Here's an example where it is useful: A collection has pictures and includes a couple of quicktime movie files with names like DCP_0163.MOV. Rather than write a new plugin for quicktime movies, add this line to the collection configuration file:

plugin UnknownPlugin -process_extension "MOV" -assoc_field "movie"

A document is created for each movie, with the associated movie file's name in the "movie" metadata field. In the collection's format strings, use the {If} macro to output different text for each type of file, like this:

{If}{[movie],<HTML for displaying movie>} {If}{[Image],<HTML for displaying image>}

You can also add extra metadata, such as the Title, Subject, and Duration, using the Librarian Interface (or with metadata.xml files).

The -process_extension option tells UnknownPlugin which file extension it should look for. Alternatively, you can use the -process_exp option which specifies a regular expression to match against entire filenames. You can have several UnknownPlugins specified for a collection, each processing a different kind of file.

The -assoc_field option is the name of the metadata field that will hold the associated file's name. This can be used to test for these files. You can also specify the mime type of the files to be processed using the -mime_type option. To display the original file, use [srclink][/srclink] metadata.