Re: Updated metadata proposal

[Christopher Curtis <ccurtis ee fit edu>]

On 23 Aug 1998, Tom Tromey wrote:

> 	http://www.cygnus.com/~tromey/gnoem/metadata.html
> Please tell me what you think.  Implementation will begin shortly.

A couple things:

#1:  You have two APIs - one using the 'file' command, one not, yet later
in your document you say that you don't want or don't intend to use the
'file' command, using 'type' instead.  I'm not sure what you mean by this
(type), but it seems to be contradictory (file).

#2:  You have two different APIs to get "metadata".  A non-fast (the
default) and a 'fast' method.  I would suggest
  a) making 'fast' the default
  b) changing the 'get' API from:
       get(file,name,size,buffer)
     to
       get(file,name,size,buffer,confidence_level)
     where confidence_level is the (user-supplied?) default.

Also, your document is a little unclear here.  It specifies an (int *) 
and a (char **), indicating that a 'get' would return (??), and describing
that this would retrieve a single piece of data.  I don't know if your
(int *) is simply a storage address or the beginning of an array.  I would
hope that a 'get' would be able to return an array of data - is this not
the case? 

ie:   get("file.jpg","view",size_array,view_array,NULL)
    would return { 3, 3, 5 }, { "ee", "xv", "gimp" };

Christopher