Re: Proposing Tracker for inclusion into GNOME 2.18

[Ross Burton <ross burtonini com>]

On Thu, 2006-10-19 at 10:12 +0100, Jamie McCracken wrote:
> It also has fully extensible metadata and a desktop wide tag/keyword 
> database so apps can use it to store all their metadata about any first 
> class object (also kind of nice for integrating with the new G-VFS 
> metadata handling)

But the "extensible metadata" isn't really extendable is it.  If I add a
new type Foo.Title, and then ask the tracker to search for a string in
titles, Foo.Title won't be searched.  I have to wait for the Foo.Title
tag to be incorporated into the specification and the UI tools updated,
which makes it useless for indexing custom metadata.

Also, if I search for "created by ross" how does the system need to know
that it should search File.Publisher, Audio.Artist, Audio.Performer,
Doc.Author and Image.Creator?  The naming scheme here is inconsistant
and redundant.

Also, you appear to be subsetting and generalising existing ontologies.
Your Image.* types somewhat map to a subset of EXIF but how did you
decide what EXIF tags should be included?    Why didn't you include
exposure compensation?  Why only Image.Date when EXIF defines three
different Date fields (taken, digitized, edited IIRC)?  Also note that
EXIF dates are in local time so don't have any timezone information, so
they won't fit into a datetime type.

Ross
-- 
Ross Burton                                 mail: ross burtonini com
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