[cc-devel] CCTools Metadata and Liblicense

Jon Phillips jon at rejon.org
Tue Jul 17 12:24:20 EDT 2007


Awesome...all integration work sounds nice...ppl here at guadec keep saying how cc comes up wrt to metadata as top hits in google...soooo...we are leading and doing some things right... ;)

Jon 


-----Original Message-----
From: Nathan R. Yergler <nathan at yergler.net>
Sent: Tuesday, July 17, 2007 5:44 PM
To: Jason Kivlighn <jkivlighn at gmail.com>
Cc: CC Developer Mailing List <cc-devel at lists.ibiblio.org>
Subject: Re: [cc-devel] CCTools Metadata and Liblicense

Comments inline...

On 7/14/07, Jason Kivlighn <jkivlighn at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm looking through Subversion for modules relating to metadata and came
> across these three: xmp, cctagutils, and cli_tools.  These all appear to
> do some subset of what the embedding/extracting aspect of liblicense[1]
> does, so I want to pose the question:  Can we work towards removing them
> in favor of liblicense?
>
>  * xmp - An embedding GUI frontend for liblicense could replace
> pdf_license_manager
>              PHP bindings for liblicense could replace jpeg-php,
> although we'd have to figure out handling of arbitrary metadata in
> liblicense.

Sounds like we need PHP bindings, and then we can think about it.  I
haven't looked @ pdf_license_manager in a while, so I can't comment on
it directly.  The arbitrary metadata handling will be needed in
general if we want to replace cctagutils, etc (since they handle
things like title, author, etc).

>  * cctagutils - Liblicense can embed licenses in all formats supported
> by cctagutils.  The liblicense python bindings make it an easy
> replacement for cctagutils.  Liblicense doesn't do other metadata that
> cctagutils handles, but it already links against the libraries that
> would easily allow this.

This would be great -- we need the following:

* Windows/Mac OS/Linux builds all working.  IIRC there may be a
wrinkle or two with needing Visual Studio for Windows, but we can
cross that bridge when we come to it.
* Handling for arbitrary metadata, as mentioned above.

>  * cli_tools - 1) I couldn't get it to run (name 'validateOptions' is
> not defined) and 2) from the README, it looks like it extracts/embeds
> licenses from MP3's.  That's exactly what liblicense can do, except in
> it's in python.  Again, the liblicense python bindings cover that.
>

Agreed; see above.

> On a larger scale, consolidating metadata handling could really help
> towards clear metadata standards and easy metadata embedding relating to
> licenses.  During my research for a Google SoC project, I came across
> several CC/non-CC applications/libraries dealing with metadata and
> frankly didn't know what to make of them.  I wondered if what I was
> looking at was obsolete or an out-dated way of handling metadata.  The
> tools' methods of handling metadata I found and what I found on the Wiki
> contradicted one-another.  Several tools worked at one point, and looks
> like they have since become neglected and broken.

I don't see us making ccLookup/ccPublisher (which both use cctagutils)
revisions a priority in the near future, but having the ability to
consolidate those libraries would be a definite benefit.

NRY


>
> I think that consolidating license embedding and extracting into
> liblicense can help towards a definitive metadata standard for
> licenses.  CC could point to liblicense and say: "This is how licenses
> should be embedded in format X".  Already, Liblicense reads and writes
> licenses to avi, mov, jpeg, png, tiff, wav, vorbis, mp3, flac, musepack,
> svg, pdf, and smil.
>
> Liblicense is portable.  It will (eventually) work on all OS'es; the
> libraries required for embedding/extracting licenses are all
> platform-independent.  And it's in C so bindings, IMHO, are trivial to
> write. (I hear we've just picked up Ruby bindings)
>
> Liblicense doesn't yet do everything it needs to for my proposal, but
> I've got (at least) the rest of the summer to work on it.  Let me know
> what needs to be done, and I can get on it.  And if anyone else would
> like to jump in, liblicense is in an early state, making it a great time
> to step up and get involved.
>
> Cheers,
> Jason
>
> [1] http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Liblicense
>
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