an [OpenMeta Tags] external could be nice..
Hi there,
I'm not a c developer, but while just looking for files tagging systems, i found this and I hope this could interest someone :
"OpenMeta is an OS X Cocoa Objective - C technology that allows any application to read and or write tags, ratings, etc to any file. It works with 10.5 and 10.6
The idea of the project is for commercial, open source and in house programs to be able to use OpenMeta for reading, writing and dealing with user defined meta data. The metadata is stored in extended attributes (xattr).
Some of the metadata stored can be stored in such a way so as to trigger the Spotlight indexer to add the data to the Spotlight DB, allowing it to be searchable."
( http://code.google.com/p/openmeta/ )
( http://openmeta.googlecode.com/files/AboutOpenMeta.pdf )
Well i know that a really universal-crossplatform metadata system would be better if it exist, but it doesn't seems.
So this OpenMeta system looks nice and is open-source. It was developed by Ironic Software, makers of Leap and deep(also search images by colors!), here you can see some video demos :
http://www.ironicsoftware.com/leap/videos/leapTour.html
http://www.ironicsoftware.com/deep/videos/thebasics.html ***
...but there is also now a bunch of software that started to use it ( http://code.google.com/p/openmeta/wiki/OpenMetaApplications ) ...why not max ?
max could then be used to automatically put all kind of tags to different kind of files, maxpat, sounds, etc.. a bit like the max-file-browser do, but in a much more open and easy way. (I even think cycling74 could convert the max-file-browser private data into OpenMeta data and use it instead in the future.) And readable by any other application reading OpenMeta tags.
*** Plus, as the "Deep" software do on images, by searching through them by color, max could be used to do something similar on sounds : an [OpenMeta Tags] max external should be able to write all kind of informations that we would automatically tag using max algorithm about rhythm, harmony, spectral info, etc... a bit like cataRT does for sounds-grains, but full sounds. Informations that would be saved with the file and readable by any other application reading OpenMeta tags! Djs would dribble about this, applied on their whole music library...
Alexandre.
Hi Alexandre-
I think the big draw-back with OpenMeta is that it's based on Spotlight and x-attributes which makes it a very Mac-centric technology. Further, it essentially relies on a "hack" which places the tag data in Apple's "unused but reserved" Spotlight index space. The OpenMeta designers did this to get visibility across all applications.
The hope is that Apple will adopt OpenMeta as a standard, but Apple could just as easily bulldoze it with some other technological priority of theirs.
I think you'll also find that once you get away from Leap, Yep, Deep, etc., support for the standard fades away pretty quickly.
Best wishes, Charles
Well, thanks for explaining.
That's a pity that there's no universal/crossplatform/file-type-independant metadata system yet...
> but Apple could just as easily bulldoze it with
> some other technological priority of theirs.
IronicSoftware are really aware of this possibility, it was disputed a lot in their forum, and from what i understood, in that case, they would adapt their technology, convert all the tags. (But ok, when this happen, you never know, perhaps the developer have changed his life and is on world tour holiday for a year, and f... the customers.)
But i wanted to say that, knowing theses draw-backs of OpenMeta, for the moment, using mac os, there doesn't seem to be anything better!
And i'm rather trustful that, when a new cross-platform metadata technology is born, their will be a way to convert OpenMeta into this.