Re: [gcmd-dev] Metatags

[Magnus Stålnacke]

Piotr Eljasiak wrote:
> > I start with one thought about meta-tags.
> > I feel there is a need for viewing meta-tags only,
>
> You'd like to have possibility to see all metatags at once, would you?
> 'File properties' dialog seems to be a good place for that - it
> accessible via menu, RMB menu, keyboard shortcut (and possibly via
> toolbar). The only problem would be that the dialog is not very big and
> it is quite difficult to have all tags in one place (maybe the solution
> is to use a tree). But... it comes to me that 'file properties' dialog
> would not be that comfortable when one wanted to view tags of many
> files. In this case IMHO it'd be better to make standalone metatags
> viewer - something in tradition of Assaf's int-viewer. But even better
> is just to add support for user-defined columns - where the column might
> be (apart from current 'standard' cols: name, ext, size, ...) any of
> known metatags. This would allow viewing metatags of many files in a way
> that is coherent with current gcmd GUI. What about it?

A 2000 character IPTC description will not fit very
well to the columns... But for a collection of mp3
it could be nice to have the possibility to sort
files after Artist or Title, or sorting photos after
date or shoting location.

I think the file properties window is allmost big
enough, an Exif, IPTC or whatever tab only needs
a scrollbar, look at the attached little dump..
A standalone meta-tag viewer could also work just
fine, accessible from file-properties.

BTW. Metadata is in a way becoming much more important
than we usually think. Rasmus Fleischer, one of the persons
behind The PirateBay and the swedish "Pirate Bureau", held
a speach at the Reboot 8.0 conference under the title
"The grey commons" about the piracy war.

In this speach metadata plays an important role,
one of the headlines in this long speach is:

"Metadata, not copyrighted material, is the war on piracy's target"

And he explains it very well:

"Pirated copies will be produced, no matter the fate of file-sharing 
networks. [ ... ] The war against file-sharing is essentially a war 
against the distribution of uncopyrighted metadata, not against the 
distribution of copyrighted material. It is about hindering the 
ever-present piracy from globalizing and open indexing, pushing it back 
to the family and the schoolyard and the workplace. Scaling-down, not in 
quantity but in network scale, from peer-to-peer to person-to-person."

http://copyriot.blogspot.com/2006/06/piratbyrans-speech-at-reboot.html

It is all about finding the content that cannot be
found with ordinary tools since the content is not
text and only can be interpreted by the human mind.