[CREATE] Categorizing resources

[Jon Phillips]

This is quite cool. I'm fwd'ing to Inkscape list. I think this is a
good way to handle all different types of resources, without spec'ing
out every detail.

I wonder if there should be some starting categories or as we called
them in Open Clip Art Library, strong categories such as brushes,
patterns, and gradients, which should be predfined in the tagging
interface.

Thoughts? I think good to move this spec onto the Create wiki:
http://create.freedesktop.org/wiki

Cheers!

Jon

On Wed, Feb 18, 2009 at 12:25 PM, Aurimas Juška <aurimas.juska at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Resource tagging is now available in GIMP development version. Before
> it is released, I think it would be good to discuss possibilities how
> tags could be shared between applications and also how tagging could
> be implemented in other applications.
>
> Common (standardized?) tag storage format
>
> Currently GIMP tags storage format is minimalistic, but seems to work
> quite well. Tags are stored in a tags.xml file which can be easily
> understood and edited manually:
> <?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>
> <tags>
>  <resource identifier="/home/auris/gimp/trunk/build/share/gimp/2.0/brushes/confetti.gih"
> checksum="d136b60fdd9cf41693a485a329b32e95">
>    <tag>aaa</tag>
>  </resource>
> </tags>
>
> Resources are mapped with entries in tags.xml using:
>  * identifier - filename for resources stored on disk. Easy to
> understand, but can be different between computers and platforms.
>  * checksum - uniquely represent resource. However, how checksum is
> calculated (which data from resource is used, algorithm) seem hard to
> standardize. Useless when user wants to edit tags.xml manually (or
> with a simple script).
>
> Currently identifier is used primarily to identify resources, and
> checksum is only used when identifier can't match actual resource file
> (file rename/move).
>
> Tag is a text string which cannot contain separator characters,
> newlines, tabs, etc. There is no additional information stored with a
> tag, such as language. However, tags provided with GIMP can be
> translated into various languages. Localized version is installed in
> user's home directory on the first run but is not changed when
> switched to a different language later.
>
> In order to make format useful for other applications and external tag
> editors as well, is there anything that should be added/removed ? It
> would be good, as always, to keep the format simple as possible.
>
> Common GUI elements
>
> It might be good for user if similar GUI element would be used for
> similar purposes. There is a small PDF available which shows more
> detail how tagging GUI elements work in GIMP:
> http://sites.google.com/site/aurijusk/gimp-resource-tagging/tagging.pdf?attredirects=0
>
> Code reuse for implementation, etc.
>
> Some code could probably could be used as starting point. It might be
> possible to put some functionality in places where multiple
> applications could take advantage of it.
>
> Best regards,
> Aurimas Juška
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>



-- 
Jon Phillips
http://rejon.org/