Re: beagle r4019 - in trunk/beagle: Util beagled beagled/DownloadsMetadataQueryable

[Debajyoti Bera <dbera web gmail com>]

> > > Author: kkubasik
> > > Date: 2007-10-02 21:55:29 +0100 (Tue, 02 Oct 2007)
> > > New Revision: 4019
> > > ViewCVS link: http://svn.gnome.org/viewcvs/beagle?rev=4019&view=rev
> > >
> > > Added:
> > >    trunk/beagle/Util/Firefox.cs
> > >    trunk/beagle/beagled/DownloadsMetadataQueryable/

Just a passing comment, I for some reason dont feel very comfortable with this 
backend. Its an uneasy feeling, probably because of the fact that 
the "metadata" (i.e. the origin of a file) information is not available in 
the file itself nor there is a guarantee that the metadata is always correct. 
It is guaranteed that the metadata is correct when the file is downloading or 
when the download finishes. But after its done downloading, the information 
in firefox's downloads.rdf is not guaranteed to be accurate anymore. For 
instance, if I overwrite the downloaded copy with a file from somewhere else, 
the metadata would apply to the new file but would be wrong!

It probably wont do a lot of practical damage if some files contain 
incorrect "origin" information but if this trend continues, I am afraid soon 
there will be inconsistencies difficult to resolve. ExternalMetadata is a 
tricky area.

Whats the correct approach ? Not sure. Definitely something which can 
guarantee that the metadata is always correct. Which brings me to only one 
conclusion: attach the metadata to the file directly e.g. by storing it in an 
xattr (or some secret sqlite file) during downloading. I am not sure if this 
is implementable.

- dBera

-- 
-----------------------------------------------------
Debajyoti Bera @ http://dtecht.blogspot.com
beagle / KDE fan
Mandriva / Inspiron-1100 user