extended attribute standardization

[Michael Burschik]

Fred Drake wrote:
> On 11/19/06, Michael Burschik <Michael.Burschik at gmx.de> wrote:
>> If you want to query a large
>> number of files, then speed will be of considerable importance. Parsing
>> complex files will certainly take a lot longer than reading extended
>> attributes.
>
> On the other hand, a cache could be applied very easily; it may even
> be that the cache could be stored in xattrs.
>
> One issue I have with using xattrs for storing anything not specific
> to a single application is that it's not cross-platform: some systems
> don't have them enabled, and some filesystems just don't support them
> at all.  If I want to write an application that works on any of
> Unix/Linux/Windows/Mac OS, using xattrs makes little sense.  
This is the usual chicken-and-egg problem again. Don't use xattrs 
because other operating systems don't have them. Other operating systems 
will never have them because they aren't used for anything... The easy 
solution would be to use xattrs when available and something else otherwise.
> A library
> that handles file-type plugins for metadata extraction would be very
> nice, however.  If it lets me store additional metadata that can't be
> embedded in the files, that would be nice, but that's something I
> could handle in my app if I really need it.
>
> Extended attributes are really neat, but without wider support, it's
> hard to justify using them at this point.
>
>
>  -Fred
>
Anyway, to return to the original issue of standardization: Even if you 
think xattrs should not be used for storing Dublin core metadata, there 
should be a standard way to do it. Therefore, I propose that Dublin core 
metadata should be stored under the user.dublincore hierarchy if it is 
stored in xattrs at all.

Regards

Michael Burschik