Re: [Usability] User problems and practices with modern desktopsystems

[Boris Goldowsky <boris alum mit edu>]

On Mon, 2004-12-20 at 12:56 +0100, john erling blad aftenposten no
wrote:

> I would prefer if categorization and other indices about file content
> was stored as file metadata, sill the metadata could be indexed by some
> external means and stored in some relational database.

There are various applications now which have as a major function the
assignment and querying of file metadata.  For example, gthumb lets you
assign categories, comments, places, etc to images.  Rhythmbox lets you
assign star ratings ratings to songs, and keeps track of things like
number of times played.  Nautilus lets you assign emblems, views, and so
forth.

Is there any plan to get all this metadata stored in a consistent manner
that could be shared across applications, or at least that would not
get broken by other applications?  If I move an image to another
directory with nautilus, it really seems wrong how gthumb loses all the
metadata I had typed in.

Perhaps the first step for anything would be to standardize on an API
for accessing and modifying file metadata.  Then the backend
implementation could be either a new filesystem type, or an external
RDB, or just a set of XML files somewhere; it wouldn't matter much to
the user.

Feel free to point me to existing resources if this is a FAQ or there
are existing standards.

Bng
-- 
Boris N. Goldowsky <boris alum mit edu>