[[!tag wishlist]]
It would be nice if ikiwiki, particularly [[plugins/comments]]
-supported user avatar icons.
+(but also, ideally, recentchanges) supported user avatar icons.
Idea is to add a directive that displays a small avatar image for a user.
-Pass it the email address, openid, or wiki username of the user.
+Pass it a user's the email address, openid, username, or the md5 hash
+of their email address:
\[[!avatar user@example.com]]
\[[!avatar http://joey.kitenet.net/]]
\[[!avatar user]]
+ \[[!avatar hash]]
These directives can then be hand-inserted onto pages, or more likely,
-included in eg, a comment post via a template. Possibly included in a
-recentchanges page item via that template too?
+included in eg, a comment post via a template.
+
+An optional second parameter can be included, containing additional
+options to pass in the
+[gravatar url](http://en.gravatar.com/site/implement/url).
+For example, this asks for a smaller gravatar, and if a user does
+not have a gravatar, uses a cute auto-generated "wavatar" avatar.
+
+ \[[!gravatar user@example.com "size=40&default=wavatar"]]
+
+The `gravitar_options` setting in the setup file can be used to
+specify additional options to pass. So for example if you want
+to use wavatars everywhere, set it to "default=wavatar".
The avatars are provided by various sites. For email addresses, it uses a
[gravatar](http://gravatar.com/). For a wiki username, the
user's email address is looked up and the gravatar for that user is
displayed. (Of course, the user has to have filled in their email address
-on their Preferences page for that to work.)
+on their Preferences page for that to work. Also, when the user changes
+their email address in Preferences, the gravatar won't change until the
+wiki is rebuilt.)
For openid, openavatar sucked and is now dead. So we need to use an email
address instead, I guess. Problem is that the email address of a given
openid is only known when that user is logged in and making a change.
And we don't want to leak an openid user's email into a page either.
Hmm. Suppose the gravatar hash could be calculated from the email address
-and embedded instead of the openid?
+and embedded instead of the openid? That would work for comments,
+but not if the directive were used elsewhere.
-Or, for openid, could use <http://paulisageek.com/openidavatar>.
+Or, for openid, could use <http://paulisageek.com/openidavatar>. Which
+works fine, but users are not likely to figure out what they need to do to
+get an avatar associated with their openid.
-An optional second parameter can be included, containing additional
-options to pass in the
-[gravatar url](http://en.gravatar.com/site/implement/url).
-For example, this asks for a smaller gravatar, and if a user does
-not have a gravatar, uses a cute auto-generated "wavatar" avatar.
+---
- \[[!gravatar user@example.com "size=40&default=wavatar"]]
+Alternative, not overdesigned approach:
-The `gravitar_options` setting in the setup file can be used to
-specify additional options to pass. So for example if you want
-to use wavatars everywhere, set it to "default=wavatar".
+Modify comments plugin to have an option to display avatars.
+
+When posting a comment, fill in the avatarhash field in the template.
+The hash is calculated from the user's email address. If the user's email
+is not known, skip it.
+
+End. :P