[Clipart] REPOST: openclipart packages and the idx file

[Alan Horkan]

On Sun, 7 Aug 2005, Jonadab the Unsightly One wrote:

> Date: 07 Aug 2005 08:48:56 -0400
> From: Jonadab the Unsightly One <jonadab at bright.net>
> Reply-To: Open Clip Art Library <clipart at lists.freedesktop.org>
> To: Open Clip Art Library <clipart at lists.freedesktop.org>
> Cc: Mike Traum <mtraum at yahoo.com>
> Subject: Re: [Clipart] REPOST: openclipart packages and the idx file
>
> Okay, this is an old thread, but...
>
> Mike Traum (whom I've Cced because I'm not sure whether he still reads
> the list, as I haven't seen a post from him in a while) was asking a
> while back about an XML index...

Neat.  If you put this Index/manifest in the right format could
effectively turn the Zip version of the collection into a properly
structured JAR file (might have benefits potential benfits for
OpenOffice).

> >  >> With regards to the keywords.idx file in the package, can you
> >  >> start making that an xml file? It's a very perl centric file,
> >  >> which make's it difficult for others (like myself) to write
> >  >> tools that use your packages.
>
> And in my reply the following things were said...
>
> > I can see the value of having an XML index, but should it index just
> > the keywords, or also authors, titles, and other metadata?  Also it
> > should be named with an .xml suffix probably, something like index.xml
> > or similar.  Anyone is welcome to write a tool that creates such an
> > index, ...
>
> > I might get to it myself, eventually (in which case I would probably
> > just roll the functionality into the existing authority control
> > script),
>
> This I have done.  The version of the clipart-authority-control script
> in CVS has a new -x option, which creates an XML index of the
> metadata.  I used this option for the 0.16 release, and so there is an
> index.xml file included in the release.  The downside is that this is
> another 3.9 MB uncompressed, although it compresses very well (222K in
> the case of bzip2 compression), so it shouldn't add that much to the
> total size of the releases.

As long as there is any reasonable justification for having this extra
metadata I'm all for it.  (Anyone terribly concerned about the size of the
archive would probably stip all the meta data or aks about making a
smaller subcollection.)

Size matters but it really only matters at certain points like when the
archive is too big to fit on particular media (floppys, zip disks,
compact-discs, etc)

> What I want to discuss, though, is the upside:  now that we have this
> thing, how can it be used?  What kinds of things can be done with it?

I dont know what the uses are but I'm sure we will find out soon enough :)


Optimistcally

Alan Horkan
http://advogato.org/person/AlanHorkan/