[Pythonmac-SIG] Free Python code and Licenses

[Bob Ippolito]

On May 20, 2005, at 12:28 PM, Jonathan Wight wrote:

>
> On May 20, 2005, at 03:00, Bob Ippolito wrote:
>
>
>
>>> Does it allow the _creation_ of custom metadata tags on files? Or  
>>> are
>>> we restricted to the ones defined by Apple?
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>> Metadata importers can define whatever key/value pairs they want to.
>> Only certain keys are used intelligently by Apple's Spotlight UI, but
>> you can define whatever you want and there are APIs to query
>> Spotlight for your own purposes.
>>
>>
>
> One problem with defining your own keys is that there are no  
> guarantees that other importers will use the same keys even if  
> they're representing the same thing...
>
> For example I'm defining two custom metadata attribute keys:  
> org_python_classes & org_python_functions to represent the list of  
> all classes and functions found within the source file. It would be  
> good if (for example) a PHP importer used the same keys as my  
> importer (perhaps with more generic key names) to represent the  
> same kinds of data found in PHP files. Unfortunately there is no  
> central repository (like Apples type & creator database) for  
> Spotlight metadata keys so it is really hard for importer authors  
> to cooperate.

It's not THAT hard, all you need is a central naming authority.  You  
could use wikipedia-based names for things, since each wikipedia URL  
represents something unambiguous.

-bob