File origin metadata

[Jamie McCracken]

Claes at work wrote:
> I stumbled upon the Shared file metadata spec
> (http://freedesktop.org/wiki/Standards_2fshared_2dfilemetadata_2dspec)
> and came to think of something that might be useful to indexers and
> related program: file origins. When a file is downloaded, saved or
> extracted from an archive, an extended attribute (EA) could be set to
> specify the origin. For downloaded files, it could be the url where it
> was downloaded from. When an attachment is saved from an email
> message, it could be the Message-ID of the email message. When a file
> is extracted from a tar archive, it could be the path to the original
> tar file. When a file is created by any regular program, it could be
> the application name of the program. A copied file could have the
> source path as origin. This information could work for desktop
> indexers just like hyperlinks works for Google.
> 
> Would such a recommendation be useful?
> 

yes that stuff is called contextual metadata and is being integrated 
into Tracker(1). It does not relate to just "origin" as such because 
there are other contextual links like attaching a file to an email (IE 
the opposite of what you suggested above) or embedding an image file in 
a document.

I have not thought of exposing them as metadata attributes yet but 
"File.Origin" sounds plausible. ("File.Attachments" might be another)

(1) http://freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/Tracker

-- 
Mr Jamie McCracken
http://jamiemcc.livejournal.com/