[Clipart] metadata: general vs. specific in SVG

[Jon Phillips]

So, one of the things I've wanted to work on is more specific metadata
usage per-object which we could hav UI for in Inkscape and for use in
Open Clip Art Library. I did some spelunking while doing research on
pippin's gegl (next generation gimp library,
http://pippin.gimp.org/gegl) and I found how to do this in SVG.

The SVG spec defines global and specific per object metadata:

SVG 1.1 standard
http://www.w3.org/TR/SVG11/metadata.html

SVG 1.2 working draft with more specifics
http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/WD-SVG12-20041027/nonvisual.html#external-metadata


Its really simple and is spelled out in the SVG 1.1 spec like so:


<svg>
    <metadata>
        <!-- general: any namespaced metadata, like rdf:rdf -->
    </metadata>
    <rect>
        <metadata>
            <!-- specific: namespaced metadata -->
        </metadata>
    </rect>
</svg>



Here is what the spec states about the specific metadata: "It is
strongly recommended that at most one 'metadata' element appear as a
child of any particular element, and that this element appear before any
other child elements (except possibly 'desc' or 'title' elements) or
character data content. If metadata-processing user agents need to
choose among multiple 'metadata' elements for processing it should
choose the first one."

Thus, what I think would be a good approach is to generalize Kees'
document metadata dialog into a panel which can be re-used and then
either we add an object metadata dialog (using Jon's panel work), or
just attach this functionality to the object properties dialog.

Thus, one could select any object and attach the same good ole quality
metadata we currently can set to the entire document.

Kees what do you think? Others, what do you think?

This would be awesome for asset management, right Andy, and would also
allow some cool features in compositing multiple elements from Open Clip
Art Library...

Jon


-- 
Jon Phillips

San Francisco, CA
USA PH 510.499.0894
jon at rejon.org
http://www.rejon.org

MSN, AIM, Yahoo Chat: kidproto
Jabber Chat: rejon at gristle.org
IRC: rejon at irc.freenode.net

Inkscape (http://inkscape.org)
Open Clip Art Library (www.openclipart.org)
Creative Commons (www.creativecommons.org)
San Francisco Art Institute (www.sfai.edu)