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Re: Adding Spotlight keywords to files
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Re: Adding Spotlight keywords to files


  • Subject: Re: Adding Spotlight keywords to files
  • From: Guy English <email@hidden>
  • Date: Sun, 7 Aug 2005 01:24:28 -0400

Hi,

    You could append "screenshot" into the Finder ( now Spotlight )
comments field. You'll need to look into Carbon stuff, the comments
are stored in the resource fork I believe.

Guy


On 8/5/05, Ben Haller <email@hidden> wrote:
>    Hi!  I've been poking through developer docs and list archives for
> a while, and I believe this question remains unanswered, although I
> saw it asked a few times by others:
>
>    Can an app simply add metadata to an existing file (one it
> creates, even), without being the owner of that file and without
> having an "importer"?  If not, is this because there just isn't API
> to do it at the moment, or is this idea in fact contrary to the
> design of Spotlight?
>
>    A practical example.  I have a screenshot app.  It lets the user
> choose what other app will "own" the screenshots it saves; you can
> make them be GraphicConverter files, Photoshop files, Preview files,
> whatever.  My app is not itself capable of opening image files at
> all; it can only create them.  So obviously my app cannot have a
> Spotlight importer.
>    I want my app to tag all the files it creates as being
> "screenshots" by tagging them with a keyword.  This would let the
> user quickly and easily find screenshots they had taken, regardless
> of where they had ended up, and that strikes me as useful.  If
> Spotlight can't do things like that, I think users will be
> disappointed...
>
>    I haven't seen this explicitly stated, but the more I read, the
> more I get the impression that a stake for Spotlight is that the
> metadata for a file must always be able to be regenerated from the
> file's data; metadata can never contain its own unique information,
> it can only hold up a mirror, as it were, to the data already in the
> file.  If this is true, then presumably there will never be a way for
> the user to just tag a bunch of files as being "related to project
> XYZ"; if that metadata were lost, there would be no way to recreate
> it, since the files themselves don't know they are part of project
> XYZ.  Such a tag would violate the fundamental design of Spotlight.
> Is this correct?  If so, it seems like a major, major limitation.
>
> Ben Haller
> Stick Software
>
>
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  • Follow-Ups:
    • Re: Adding Spotlight keywords to files
      • From: Vince DeMarco <email@hidden>
    • Re: Adding Spotlight keywords to files
      • From: Jeroen Verbeek <email@hidden>
References: 
 >Adding Spotlight keywords to files (From: Ben Haller <email@hidden>)

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