Re: Meta data

[Darin Adler <darin eazel com>]

on 2/18/01 11:53 PM, Mats Loman at mats loman home se wrote:

> I wonder: Is anybody actually using the metadata functions in the
> gnome-libs?

When we began the Nautilus project we determined that only gmc was using the
metadata functions in gnome-libs. If anyone is using them outside gmc, I'd
like to hear about it, because it has sme effects on our plans.

> I was looking through the Nautilus source code quickly. I looked that Nautilus
> is using its own metadata (I might be very wrong here).
>
> [...]
> 
> I need to store the following information about each file:
> 
>     a. MD5 Checksum ( or other checksum/ signature )
>     b. I want to be able to set a Nautilus emblem on a duplicate/changed file.
> 
> So the big question is: Can I use metadata functions from the gnome-libs
> for this?

This is something that you can't do at all (cleanly) with Nautilus 1.0. The
problem is something we're hoping to address in a future release, perhaps by
adding features to gnome-vfs.

A while back, Ian McKellar proposed a design with namespaces (so various
programs could store their metadata along with the base Nautilus metadata)
that would be part of gnome-vfs, but we didn't have time to start
implementing this for the Nautilus 1.0 project.

The good news is that the metadata is stored in a simple XML format that's
easy to parse yourself -- you can post to Nautilus list to ask about
details. The bad news is that without a lower-level I know of no way to
cooperate with Nautilus and prevent it from overwriting your changes and
vice versa.

    -- Darin