Re: Reconciling all the metadata

["Lucas Rocha" <lucasr gnome org>]

Hi Hubert,

> In bug #451101
>   http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=451101
> I provide a patch to support XMP metadata in EOG. The support is quite
> rough as it dump the whole set in a treeview.

It's awesome anyway! :-)

> Now XMP metadata overlap with Exif, because it is meant to provide more
> than that. So I was wonder about the opportunity to actually reconcile
> both set of metadata in a unique "Metadata" view.

What do you mean with "reconcile"? Is it providing a unified  "view"
for all types of metadata? I agree that it doesn't make sense to have
different views (EXIF and XMP) to the very same data.

There are two levels for discussion on this topic: the UI level and
the framework level.

On the UI level, the goal should be to provide the useful data in a
meaningful/intuitive fashion. On the other hand, we can't limit power
users (who generaly want to have access to the metadata dumps). A good
first step is to think of the main metadata categories like:
- Basic (title, description, date, etc)
- Capture (aperture value, exposure time, focal length, flash, iso,
orientation, etc)
- Location (country, city, coordinates, etc)
- Authorship (author name, license, copyright notes, etc).
- Any other?

On the metadata framework level, the goal should be to provide support
for different image formats and types of metadata. The access to the
metadata from the categories cited above should be independent of
source (EXIF, IPTC-NAA or XMP). I have some ideas for the framework
already. Do you have anything in mind?

> Is anyone opposed to the idea?

Not at all. :-)

--lucasr