[Pythonmac-SIG] Free Python code and Licenses

[Jonathan Wight]

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.

     Jon.