[Wasabi] Kicking of the Metadata spec - brainstorm

[Mikkel Kamstrup Erlandsen]

Let's get the ball rolling on the metadata spec. This first period will just
be *brainstorming*, so let's try and avoid the nitty gritty details for now.

 ** What we need:

  Fields)  Metadata field names and descriptions for *desktop* objects

  Types) A type grouping of metadata fields to be used in user search
language. Example types could be "Email", "Image", "Audio", etc.

  API) A dbus api to get/set metadata

  ?Tag/Emblem) Tagging/Keywords/Emblems

 ** Starting points/References:
 - Adobe XMP:
http://partners.adobe.com/public/developer/en/xmp/sdk/XMPspecification.pdf<http://freedesktop.org/wiki/Standards_2fdesktop_2demblem_2dspec>
 - Shared Metadata Spec:
http://freedesktop.org/wiki/Standards_2fshared_2dfilemetadata_2dspec
 - Tracker metadata api:
http://svn.gnome.org/viewcvs/tracker/trunk/data/tracker-introspect.xml?view=markup
 - Spotlight Metadata Spec:
http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Carbon/Reference/MetadataAttributesRef/Reference/CommonAttrs.html

 - Shared Emblem Spec:
http://freedesktop.org/wiki/Standards_2fdesktop_2demblem_2dspec
 - Others ideas? Nepomuk-specs? Beagle-specs?

 ** My thoughts:
Regarding Fields): To prevent death-by-1000-page-spec I suggest we keep the
field names to a core set of commonly used attributes. Ie not like Apples
spotlight spec (see above) which defines every known property in the
universe. When things move on, teams with expert knowledge can refine
extensions to this spec. Fx a Wasabi Photography Metadata spec could be
hashed out by people in the know (which could just be EXIF, but I'm not the
photography expert).

Regarding Types): There are some suggestions in the top of the Tracker api
link above. Regarding these I think we should leave the VFS* types out, and
only use single-word type names (Ie no spaces).

On the API): Obviously we getters and setters. They probably need to operate
on uris. There probably needs to be some search functionality in here too
since we probably shouldn't assume that the indexer and metadata server are
the same.

Tagging/Emblems: If you ask me they should be "just another type of
metadata". When the metadata spec matures a bit we can evaluate if it needs
it's own api to make things easier (and allow for dedicated tagging
services).

Cheers,
Mikkel
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