Galatee is a Java library for exploring and searching in large image collection where images are text-annotated.

Feel free to send me an email at nicolas.james@gmail.com if you are interested by this library.

The Galatee library provides:

• visualization of a list of images (with associated metadata): images are referenced by a URI object: the scheme of the URI can be file for a local image file, or http for an image file accessible via HTTP,
• textual search in the image list (based on the value of the image URI and on the image description) using a Lucene in-memory index,
• downloading, in-memory loading and resizing of an image is made only when it's necessary (something like a load when you see),
• multi-threading for the downloading, loading, resizing of the images,
• configuration via a Galatee.properties file:
  1. customize the item visualization (image size, text area size),
  2. cache directory for downloaded files.
• adding popup menus on items,
• implementing its own item visualization is easy (just a class to extends, the GCellPanel class).
• Galatee has an EventListener interface for easily forwarding the user interaction to your code:

  public interface GListener extends EventListener {
    public void itemDoubleClicked(GEvent e);
    public void selectionChanged(GEvent e);
  }

• An application is embedded in the library: DatasetExplorer.
  Edit the file Galatee.properties and update the value of PROPERTY_DEFAULT_TEMP_DIRECTORY, it must be the path to a temporary directory.
  On the MS-Windows platform the antislash character in a java properties file has to be escaped, i.e. a double antislash instead of one antislash.
  Launch Galatee.sh under a GNU/Linux platform and Galatee.bat under a windows platform.
  

• A small code for generating a listing of the annotated images from the datasets of the PascalVOC challenge: PascalVOC-0.1-2010.06.23.jar.
  However this code works only since the challenge of 2007, i.e. since annotations are available in an XML format.
  How it works:
  1. Update the PascalVOC.properties file with your configuration (i.e. with your installation path of the PascalVOC data)
     Don't forget to escape the antislash character in this file if you're using a MS-Windows platform.
  2. Execute the method PascalVOCStarter.createAnnotatedImagesListing().
  3. Use the DatasetExplorer application to read the file created at the step 2, using the “local filepath list explorer” option and using a prefix which is the path to the JPGImages directory of your PascalVOC data.

• A example for displaying the data of the PascalVOC challenges (since the 2007 challenge, i.e. since annotation files are XML files) using the Galatee library for browsing in the data, and the Jmagine library for displaying images with their annotated polygons: PascalVOC-0.2-2010.07.01.tar.gz
  
  

• SVN repository http://svn.trevize.net/PascalVOC (login anonymous password anonymous) (it's an Eclipse Java Project)

The library and the applications (DatasetExplorer etc.) are built on a GNU/Linux platform but it should work also on the windows platform (if not, drop me a line at nicolas.james@gmail.com about any problem you encounter). However, the embedded applications in the library archive use some external applications (like those of the ImageMagick project) on a GNU/Linux system (through a special class called SystemCommandHandler2 which is only available for GNU/Linux system), so some functionnalities are only available on GNU/Linux and Unix systems.

• Galatee-1.45-2010.07.26-SNAPSHOT.tar.bz2

• SVN repository http://svn.trevize.net/Galatee (login anonymous password anonymous) (it's an Eclipse Java Project)

• DirectoryExplorer.java

Galatee, a Java library for exploring image collection in Java.
Copyright © 2009-2010, Nicolas James.
http://njames.trevize.net/wiki/projects:galatee

Galatee is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2.1 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
Galatee is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU Lesser General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU Lesser General Public License along with this Module; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin St, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA.

Galatee use the following libraries:

• Apache Batik, commons-codec, commons-httpclient, commons-io, commons-lang, commons-logging, log4j, lucene-core: under Apache license
• JUI: under GPL license
• netbeans swing outline: under GPLv2 license
• some of my libraries: Tinker, Jmagine, FSExplorer: under GPLv2 license
• conja
• JAI: Java Research License (JRL)

• v0.46 → v1.43
  • correction of several bugs for the windows platform.
  • use Jmagine for displaying images by default in the DatasetExplorer.

• v0.45 → v0.46
  • lucene in_memory index for searching
  • bug correction: edited cell not immediatly displayed when browsing and specially when searching. corrected.
  • bug correction: scrolling to an item is not ensure that this item is in the visible rectangle of the JTable. corrected.

• v0.44 → v0.45
  • embedded application DatasetExplorer

• v0.43 → v0.44

• v0.42 → v0.43
  • the key '-' was not correctly mapped (the action for removing a column in the browser), it's corrected.
  • Conja is now used for the loading of the image queue (using an implementation of Iterable, GItemList and an implementation of Iterator, GItemListIterator).
  • the first object of the data associated to a GItem, is the description displayed in the browser, the other objects are that you want.
  • the key page_up and page_down was very buggy and changed the current selection. For now, the scrolling is ok, and going page_up and page_down do not modify the current selection.
  • the verification that a cell was not empty when moving with arrow keys was not made, and an Exception was thrown. Resolved.
  • the imageDescriptionSpacer in the GCellPanel was added even if the imageDescriptionWidth == 0 (no description).
  • An editor has been added to the project: _TableCellEditor. It's basically an example, could be completly rewritten, for now it just allows to copy the filepath to the clipboard.
  • introduction of a Galatee.properties and a GalateeProperties class for storing all the configuration of Galatee.
  • from now Galatee take in argument a list of URI (no more a list of File object), this allows to have image located on the web. If the scheme of the URI is “http” the image is downloaded in a temporary directory (see GalateeProperties), if the scheme is “file” nothing is changed compared to previously when Galatee took in argument a list of File object.
  • introduction of HTTPAbsoluteFileListDatasetExplorer class, which take in argument a text file containing at each line a relative URL. I use the term of “relative URL” because each line will be prefixed by a “host_prefix” to build a valid URL.
    A use case of such a class is a web directory, whatever is the server hosting your files, you just need (1) a text file that contains the relative path to your images, (2) the URL prefix, i.e. the web adress of the server that contains your image dataset.

• the FSExplore does not support the multiple root filesystem on Windows platform.

• the search bar does not appear on Windows platform.

• a bug with the “home” and “end” keys (selection item not updated). corrected in v0.43.

• When loading very large image databases (I've tested with 67k documents, a snapshot of the ESP Game data), it seems JAI has memory issues:

  Error: One factory fails for the operation "stream"
  Occurs in: javax.media.jai.ThreadSafeOperationRegistry

  This bug occurs with the pure Java mode, and with the JAI accelerator. It's not a critical bug because we don't open such a large database usually.

• page_down (resp. page_up) do not stop on the last element (resp. first). corrected in v0.43.

• the last loaded image is not displayed in the GUI if it is the current edited cell (i.e. the currently selected image) it's cause of the _TableCellEditor, cp.setimage(null) and the image is loaded after that, so if the selection hasn't change, the cp.setImage(image) have not been done… resolved in v0.43

• changing the selection using the arrow keys is buggy. There also a bug after “add a column” or “remove a column”. (idea: since the introduction of the _TableCellEditor, we have to update the edited cell after a change of selection). resolved in v0.43.

• be careful: the SystemCommandHandler for using the imagemagick display command is buggy. resolve in v0.43. In fact, the SystemCommandHandler using naively the Process class in Java is complicated to use, so I've integrated my SystemCommandHandler2 using a character stream in the input of a Unix Shell. Obviously, this trick only run under GNU/Linux, for Windows the SystemCommandHandler is still in the project.

• could be useful to get the possibility to see/unsee the meta.

• the doubleclick action is launch whatever is the clicked button. corrected in v0.43

• write a _TableCellEditor (copy/paste filepath for example). added in v0.43.

• si le nombre de document n'est pas divisible par le nombre de ligne il y a des cellules vide, normalement une cellule vide n'est pas affichée, mais lorsque le texte de la description est plus grand que la hauteur de l'image une cellule vide est rendue. Unreproducible.

• si le nombre de document n'est pas divisible par le nombre de ligne il y a des cellules vide, cependant avec les touches curseur la selection se déplace sur la ou les cellules vide non affichées. resolved in v0.43.

• concernant le thread de chargement des images, il serait judicieux de coder un pool de thread pour améliorer le chargement des images, et utiliser un ExecutorService plutôt qu'un pool codé “old school” avec des blocs synchronized. resolved in v0.43.

• when the display is parametrized with 3 columns, but there are only two results, typing '-' for removing a column is not performed in the GUI (from the user eyes), because the number of column is 3. The problem is here too with the key '+, 'add a column' action then shouldn't add a column if no data to put in it. resolved in v0.43.