What does the images tab is the left sidebar of RW do?
I know it’s been there since forever, but I’ve genuinely never clicked it before. Now I have, I see it’s packed with images most of which mean nothing to me.
Does it scrap my system and display all images found? Or, are these images in the project?
I’d say it can’t be the latter, as there are far too many. But then, the former seems unlikely too.
Or maybe it does something else entirely?
I guess it is the same issue as with partials.
Those are images that are part of the stacks. They are used in your end project, like backgrounds, badges and music player buttons. Right click on the image and you can open it in Finder and you see that they’re part of a stack.
AFAIK images can be loaded into a stack by a developer and displayed and selected using that Images tab, by the user, using a version of Rapidweaver that supports Stacks. Elements won’t of course.
If I recall correctly, Joe’s Jack stack uses this to load images of picture frames similar to Win98 clipart or the Corel3 book chapter that details the picture frames, for those who are into that sort of stuff and still alive.
Hmmm, maybe, but might be more complex.
One of the images I recognize. I added it to a project last week. It’s nothing to do with the project I can see it in.
If I select to view in finder, it’s here…
Library > Containers > Rapidweaver > Data > Library > Application Support > Stacks 5 > Stacks Image Backup 23-08-03 #161753425 >
Another, from a project I made years ago. Not opened it for at least three years, has an almost identical path, but a slightly different end folder.
Another image which I don’t recognize…
rapidweaver-addons > Stacks > email.stack > content > icon.stack > contents > Resources > icons >
So while the images stored in the addons folder could be images attached to the stacks, Stacks itself seems to be creating backup folders of random images. And these, like externals, are leaking.
Update…
I deleted all the stacks image backup folders then rebooted RW.
A new backup folder was created, but only contained the images used in the project opened.
So while, i think there is some leakage of backup images between projects, it doesn’t seem too big a deal as they don’t seem to effect the project size.
All the backup folders I deleted amounted to 1GB of data.
EDIT: These are the backup folders I deleted (I didn’t actually delete them, just moved them).
So it kinda looks like Stacks makes a backup of project images going back X number of days.
But for sure, there are images in there tht I don’t recognise, and some going back to projects not opened in years. So there must be leakage across projects.
It would be great to actually get some comment from Yourhead on this. I’m not signing up to Discord to ask. But if anyone else has this issue and is on his Discord thing, perhaps it might be an idea to raise it with him.
Update:
Unfortunately the above didn’t work. RW just crashed. Re-opened it and all the images are there again, including many I’ve never seen before and some from projects not opened in years.
It’s a mess. But I’m giving up on it as the devs involved are looking forward to new users for their new platforms, not looking at the existing userbase and fixing stuff for them. Which, frankly, is not a good look.
