New ImageKeys Design Hash/Record

[Hanmac]

The different situations of ImageKeys: (With/Without Set, With/Without CN, With/Without Artist, maybe back) lets me think it might be better to have them as Key-Value: c:Jaheira, Ruthless Harper|HBG|16b into c:Name$ Jaheira, Ruthless Harper | Set$ HBG | CN$ 16b | Artist$ Mila Pesic

Then I don't need to ask the Edition/EditionEntry when I want to display the Artist

Sounds like the amount of data here is growing beyond what a string is good at storing. Maybe the image key needs to be expanded into a full on class/record for containing image metadata? Then we could pile on whatever extra metadata we want - specialize mode, front or back, artist, flipped flag, whether we even expect it exists on Scryfall or if it's something local like an Adventure card or placeholder. It could just have its own methods for translating itself into a filename, a legacy filename, a Scryfall URL, a hashcode, etc.

Originally posted by @Jetz72 in #7757 (comment)

[Hanmac]

I moved this to extra issue so we can Brainstorm about what such remade Image Key should be able to do.

• become FilePath
• become Scryfall Link
• have CollectorNumber and Artist available (in addition to Name and Set)

[Jetz72]

I think it'd make most sense to have a block of metadata that describes everything we'd need to know about a card/token/effect's image.
I think it'd need:

• Card's set code and collector number.
• Card State Name - Whether it's the front or back, specialize color, if it's a meld face, or other card state info.
• Card Name - Needed at least for generating old-format file paths as fallbacks.
• Card Source - Such as whether the card is an official card on ScryFall or a custom one. See below.
• If the image should be rendered upside down (i.e. flipped state)
• Artist

Possibly also:

• [any other data needed to make a Scryfall URL or file name? If I'm forgetting something...]
• Language? Gets a bit complicated.
• If the card has failed to download before? Might be better tracked elsewhere, especially if this class is immutable.
• Functional Variant ID? Might just be part of the collector number, but I think the old-format file paths use it.
• A resource file path if the card is from Forge. Orrrrr, we could move all of Forge's original cards into one folder? Or use the set code to point it to either the Adventure or Quest directory?
• Whether the image is a full-border or art-crop.

Other question is where these are generated, and how they're stored. The PaperCard should be able to fill in most of this so maybe the PaperCard generates it when asked for an image key if it doesn't already have one, then it caches it for future requests. The PaperCard might need to know the Card Source so it can fill that in properly, or we could manually fill in image metadata as we load custom cards and write it to the resultant PaperCard.

And as for functions, yeah, I think the main ones are reducing all that data into strings for other systems to use.

• Generate the ScryFall URL to download the image from.
• Generate the file path to store and look for the image under
• Generate the old format filename, for looking for previously existing images if a current one isn't found.

To elaborate a bit on the "Card Source" flag, this would affect behavior of URI-supplying methods, so we don't go asking ScryFall for cards it doesn't have. Values to consider for now:

• Official - A card, token, or other image that can be supplied by Scryfall.
• Forge - An Adventure, Quest, or other Forge-original card. Can't be downloaded, returns a predetermined file path in Forge's resources when requested.
• Custom - A custom card that the user installed. Can't be downloaded, returns a filepath pointing to the appropriate spot in the custom card directory.
• Placeholder - A singleton constant used for placeholder cards, tokens that can't find a matching artwork, effects that can't be sourced to a card with an image, etc. Can't be loaded, and all the URL and file path methods return null.

[Hanmac]

"full-border or art-crop" might be a bit tricky, because the settings for this are in GUI, while the ImageKey class probably needs to be in Core 🤔

[Hanmac]

If the image should be rendered upside down (i.e. flipped state)

i want to add the CardStateName as attribute, because this might be more correct than Flipped/NotFlipped
Also, Scryfall doesn't have images for Flipped, so we might need to rotate the image ourselves

[Jetz72]

"full-border or art-crop" might be a bit tricky, because the settings for this are in GUI, while the ImageKey class probably needs to be in Core 🤔

Hmm. It'd probably still be better to have filepath generation all in one place rather than bolting it on after the fact. But I guess this shouldn't be a field on the image key, just a static value that the UI can change and which gets used when generating file paths and URLs? Dunno if there'd be any issues with it changing while some images are already loaded.

i want to add the CardStateName as attribute, because this might be more correct than Flipped/NotFlipped Also, Scryfall doesn't have images for Flipped, so we might need to rotate the image ourselves

Oh right, the CardStateName should mostly cover this. And yeah, a flipped card would return the same URL and file path as its unflipped state, and we can handle the actual flipping during rendering.

[Hanmac]

@Jetz72 what we could do is something like this:

record ImageKey() {
  public String getFilePath(boolean artCrop) {}
  public String getScryfallUrl(boolean artCrop) {}
}

[Jetz72]

Would artCrop ever use anything besides what the user preference is set to? It'd be a whole lot nicer if we could just call getFilePath() without having to throw a "Crop".equals(FModel.getPreferences().getPref(ForgePreferences.FPref.UI_CARD_ART_FORMAT)) or similar inside the parentheses each time it's used.

[Hanmac]

Would artCrop ever use anything besides what the user preference is set to? It'd be a whole lot nicer if we could just call getFilePath() without having to throw a "Crop".equals(FModel.getPreferences().getPref(ForgePreferences.FPref.UI_CARD_ART_FORMAT)) or similar inside the parentheses each time it's used.

i probably could pass an enum instead, then we can add more stuff later