Cocoa mail archive
Re: Resource Fork - is this a good use/the right thing to do?
FROM : Daniel DeCovnick
DATE : Wed Apr 23 19:00:18 2008
Actually it is possible, at least according to the OSXBook, to add
arbitrary key-value paired metadata to a file (IIRC, all MDItem keys
share a flat namespace). It theoretically works without Spotlight, but
nothing uses metadata that doesn't use Spotlight currently, AFAIK, and
my data isn't anything that would be meaningful to anything or anyone
outside of my app. It really is data rather than metadata.
On Apr 23, 2008, at 12:41 PM, Gerd Knops wrote:
> Coincidentally I just went through that same song and dance. With
> Spotlight becoming more and more important in OSX, it is surprising
> Apple has not provided a clean method to store arbitrary metadata
> with any kind of file. Maybe time for us all to file an enhancement
> request.
>
> With metadata becoming more and more important in daily use it would
> be great if a platform independent way of storing metadata would be
> devised. But I am not holding my breath. In the mean time we all
> muddle along with our individual solutions...
>
> Another, though related, issue is that spotlight importers still can
> not be cascaded. Even just adding a few simple fields of metadata to
> an existing file format means one has to re-implement the importer
> for that format from scratch, no way of 'sub-classing' existing
> importers.
>
Off-topic, but amen!
-Dan
DATE : Wed Apr 23 19:00:18 2008
Actually it is possible, at least according to the OSXBook, to add
arbitrary key-value paired metadata to a file (IIRC, all MDItem keys
share a flat namespace). It theoretically works without Spotlight, but
nothing uses metadata that doesn't use Spotlight currently, AFAIK, and
my data isn't anything that would be meaningful to anything or anyone
outside of my app. It really is data rather than metadata.
On Apr 23, 2008, at 12:41 PM, Gerd Knops wrote:
> Coincidentally I just went through that same song and dance. With
> Spotlight becoming more and more important in OSX, it is surprising
> Apple has not provided a clean method to store arbitrary metadata
> with any kind of file. Maybe time for us all to file an enhancement
> request.
>
> With metadata becoming more and more important in daily use it would
> be great if a platform independent way of storing metadata would be
> devised. But I am not holding my breath. In the mean time we all
> muddle along with our individual solutions...
>
> Another, though related, issue is that spotlight importers still can
> not be cascaded. Even just adding a few simple fields of metadata to
> an existing file format means one has to re-implement the importer
> for that format from scratch, no way of 'sub-classing' existing
> importers.
>
Off-topic, but amen!
-Dan
