16 Mar
2007
16 Mar
'07
8:20 a.m.
John Foust wrote:
Metadata is very, very useful. It is certainly
apropos given the
recent discussions about not being able to find things in 'ftp' archives,
a fine example of an overdependence on overloading metadata into filenames.
It's at the heart of almost every one of our discussions about archiving
floppy images, tapes, etc.
I'm seriously considering making use of the metadata facilities that some of
the Linux filesystems provide [1] to be honest. I've held out until now
because I don't like the idea of getting tied to one particular format - but
no matter how much database and filesystem change notification (inotify etc.)
is used, there are still "holes" where it's hard to keep the data and the
metadata in sync if the metadata repository is layered on top of the filesystem.
Anyway, it'd be personally useful not just for vintage archives but also for
all these darn photos I keep taking of stuff (where a given image might fit
into several logical "categories") :-)
[1] Compulsory "vintage" question - what filesystem / platform was the first
to allow arbitrary metadata to be included at the actual file level?
cheers
Jules