[XML-SIG] Metadata in XBEL

[Ross Burton]

Hi,

> First, I'm glad that Galeon uses XBEL too, I didn't know that.

Well, the lack of XBEL is what prompted me to start work on it.  There is
now a branch were work by me and Ricardo is slowly but surely progressing.

> The way it currently works in Konqueror is the following.
>  <bookmark icon="www" href="http://www.kde.org/" >
>   <title>KDE Home Page</title>
>  </bookmark>
>
> The icon is an attribute of the bookmark element, and of the folder
element,
> and
> * either the icon name is the base name of a globally
> available icon; no extension is written, and no directory either.
> The icon loading looks for icons of that name + ".png" or ".xpm",
> under the standard (for KDE) directories, e.g.
/usr/share/icons/hicolor/16x16/*/
> This makes it possible to have a different icon for 8-bit displays
> (locolor instead of hicolor), and gives access to different icon sizes.
> * or the icon name is like "favicons/www-1.ibm.com" to designate a
> "favourite icon" for a given site, which has been stored under the
> ~/.kde/share/icons/favicons/ directory (with .png appended).
> * obviously full paths are supported too.
> I realize that all this is very hard to standardize !!
> The only practical solution is to add the search paths of the other
> environment in each, as was done for .desktop files. But that doesn't
> consistute a clean spec. I'm afraid I have no solution to offer,
> I guess I'm just pointing out that sharing the same attribute might
> not be enough for users to use the same bookmark collection with
> both browsers.

Hmm... I didn't know KDE had lists of icons.  That could be an issue.

> I saw in another mail on the subject, this piece of XML :
>  > <site ...>
>   >   <info>
>   >     <metadata owner="http://galeon.sourceforge.net">
>   >       <pixmap>/home/users/ross/pictures/slashdot.org</pixmap>
>   >       <toolbar>true</toolbar>
>   >     </metadata>
>   >   </info>
>   > </site>
> Is this a concrete case of XML used by Galeon, or is it more like a
> theorical example ?
> I'm surprised by <site>, <info> etc. Is that part of XBEL ?
> I guess not :)

That's the Lack Of Caffine And Sleep problem again. site == bookmark.
Galeon now (my local copy, anyway) exports its metadata in that form, so
there is only one metadata element owned by Galeon in each bookmark/folder.

> Surely jumping in the middle of a discussion doesn't help :-)
> Anyway, back to the icon issue, this seems to suggest that Galeon
> uses full paths ?

Yes, it does.

> > 3) notes on bookmark
> That, and many other things associated with bookmarks, will end
> up being necessary.
> Juergen (who plans to contribute to Konqueror's bookmarks) mentionned
> scoring: "to give the site a score (of out 10, for example)... then you
could
> search for "linux kde development" with a score >= 7 for example".
> Especially useful if merging is done, see end of mail.
> Other things that users mentionned were: list of keywords
> (still for searches), and, hmm, how often a given bookmark was
> visited. Not very important, given that we still don't support the
> added/visited/modified dates yet.

Nice ideas.  You're not alone with the added/visited/modified dates, BTW.
:-)

> One often requested feature, is for merging. For instance, in a company,
> there could be a "company-global" set of bookmarks, to be merged with
> the user's bookmarks - much like everything else in KDE already has
> a global and a local directory, possibly with even more levels (e.g. for
> groups of people).

I like that idea too, it could be very handy.

> In summary, despite the compatibility problem with icon names (and paths),
> I'm very happy if icon="..." and toolbar="yes" are added to XBEL
> (given that Konqueror already uses those), I suggest to add an <include>
> possibility, and the few other things that are not in XBEL and that might
> be in konqueror one day (keywords, scoring), can certainly be done as
> konq-specific metadata - unless others want to share the same data.

I'm for creating a set of metadata owners which can be considered "standard"
in that they are defined under common grounds in the open.  Not part of the
actual specification (as it's best if that is kept small) but a catalogue of
owners and expected content which would allow sharing of data.  Into this
could be added all of the usefull attributes which could be shared without
making XBEL overly complex, such as keywords and scoring.

Regards,
Ross Burton
---
Ross Burton                     Software Engineer
OneEighty Software Ltd          Tel: +44 20 8263 2332
The Lansdowne Building          Fax: +44 20 8263 6314
2 Lansdowne Road                r.burton@180sw.com
Croydon, Surrey CR9 2ER, UK     http://www.180sw.com./
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