discussion of the Creative Commons Metadata work

[Carol Spears <carol AT gimp.org>]

On Mon, Apr 11, 2005 at 03:57:20PM -0700, Mike Linksvayer wrote:
> 
> So you're embedding XML in image files, do I understand correctly?
> 
eventually.  i consider the dtd to be the crucial thing before i call
anything my plug-in writes "xml"

> 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.
> 
it is the nature of xml (at least for some of us) to be used to define
information in a way that meets your own needs.  at least, this is
always what i thought was neat about it.  of course, such flexibility
leads to ideas like this.

driving me is the frustrating situation in which many of the existing
options do not work on my operating system, or change so they dont work.  
if i am going to put the time into this, i am going to end up with 
information that i can share and information i can count on not changing 
too often and information that i can trust.

> The problem with this is that none of the apps embedding and reading 
> these formats will interoperate with any other.
> 
as i said earlier, my app works on so many operating systems.  i am
gathering information that other plug-ins i have written can use (i have
some really simple gallery scripts).  just as the the photoshop plug-in
writes XMP for adobe, my plug-in will be writing GIPP for gimp.  there
is a chance that there will be a user base of only one person.  it is
being written to help me and some of my friends with their image
licensing problems.  

you can clearly see how lazy i am.  i dont want to have to paste
information or load a template even.  one toggle and its off ....

GIPP will be a text xml file, so it could be useful to many.

> 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.
> 
we have had problems with exif containing inaccurate rotation
information already.  XMP is as useful to gimp as GIPP is to photoshop.
i have never heard of IPTC.  it will be useful to gimp users to get the
exif information and fix it if some other application wrote incorrect
information to it.

> 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.
> 
what is the big deal about using xml then?

the first big selling feature i responded to when xml first hit all of
my media was "flexibility".  XMP is handled by an application which does
not work on my operating system and this is one of those inoperability
issues that i did not have too much to do with.

thanks,
carol