Common spec/interface for file metadata

[Jamie McCracken]

Hi,

Whilst discussing metadata needs for Nautilus, there might be a good 
case for having a shared metadata interface as there are already a 
number of metadata frameworks being developed like KDE4's tenor and the 
Beagle project (as well as my own which I am developing).

Filemanagers will need to be able to get access to both automatically 
derived metadata on files as well as user defined ones and it makes 
sense to use an existing framework if one is already being used for 
searching/indexing.

To facilitate this, I would like to propose a simple dbus interface 
(org/freedesktop/metadata) to allow cross desktop applications to tap 
into this wealth of information.

Methods :

GetFileMetaData
	input DBUS_TYPE_STRING s (the file uri)
	output DBUS_TYPE_DICT  a{ss} (the metadata)

SetFileMetaData
   	input DBUS_TYPE_STRING s (the file uri)
	input DBUS_TYPE_DICT  a{ss} (the file metadata)


The above should be self-explanatory. It would also be handy to have a 
search method which returns an array of file uris from an input query 
string but I have no idea what form the input string should take so 
please make suggestions for this or for anything else.

If this is deemed good enough and useful enough then I will create a 
wiki page for it (subject to an FDO admin granting me this).

-- 
Mr Jamie McCracken
http://www.advogato.org/person/jamiemcc/