discussion of the Creative Commons Metadata work

[Mike Linksvayer <ml AT creativecommons.org>]

Carol Spears wrote:
> my plug-in goes to the web site.  in the url, the creative commons site
> asked for a partner name.  this weekend while debugging, the plug-in was
> partner = "testing" and later partner = "GIPP".  i am uncertain if there
> is a better partner name or the means to register my plug-in so that the
> creative commons people know of it.

You can pass in whatever you want, "GIPP" is fine. "partner" sounds like 
it requires some registration, but it doesn't.

(Anyone reading this who doesn't know what we're talking about, see 
http://creativecommons.org/technology/web-integration )

> > > 2) what other meta data would be good for my little multi-platform
> > > data file?  (what do you want to bet that gimp-python works on mac and
> > > windows before photoshop works on gnu/linux?)
> >
> > If you used RDF (or XMP, a subset of RDF) you wouldn't have to worry 
> > about this.
> RDF is great and a goal.  XMP is interesting to me only to glean
> information from it.  actually, it might be interesting to add the
> option to import or fix XMP only, not export.  it lacks much of the
> multi-operating system requirements i have.

So you're embedding XML in image files, do I understand correctly?

Lots of other people have had the same idea, or more generally the idea 
that they could stuff some structured information into a comment-y 
field.  Every couple months I get an email from one of these people, 
presumably representing a tiny faction of the people doing this sort of 
thing.

The problem with this is that none of the apps embedding and reading 
these formats will interoperate with any other.

There are already at least three fairly accepted embedded metadata 
formats for images -- IPTC, EXIF, and XMP, the last being RDF-based and 
mirroring all of the fields available in the first two.

I urge you, and everyone who writes similarly, to use one of these 
established metadata formats when embedding metadata in images.  Use 
whatever you want for external files.

--
  Mike Linksvayer
  http://creativecommons.org/about/people#21