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8094b54f35
Create a unified format for my wiki. Unfortunately, since most of my notes are created on a whim and I don't care much about metadata at the time, the timestamps are only approximations from my memory.
30 lines
2.7 KiB
Org Mode
Executable File
30 lines
2.7 KiB
Org Mode
Executable File
#+TITLE: File metadata
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#+AUTHOR: "Gabriel Arazas"
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#+EMAIL: "foo.dogsquared@gmail.com"
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#+DATE: "2020-04-13 17:32:27+08:00"
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#+DATE_MODIFIED: "2020-09-09 05:17:29+08:00"
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#+LANGUAGE: en
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#+OPTIONS: toc:t
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#+PROPERTY: header-args :exports both
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File metadata is one of the most subtle requirements in [[file:2020-04-23-23-21-47.org][Personal information management]] (or at least, that's what I think).
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With the right tools such as desktop search engines (see [[file:2020-04-15-20-41-51.org][Add a desktop search engine for your digital library]]), you can quickly retrieve information as well as preserve some of its related information.
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[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metadata][Each type of files have different ways of embedding metadata.]]
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- Image files such as JPEG or PNG, metadata are embedded in [[https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Exchangeable_image_file_format][Exchangeable image file format]] (EXIF) and you can modify it with various tools such as [[http://owl.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool/][ExifTool]].
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- MP3 files have the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ID3][ID3]] as the de-facto standard for embedding contextual information such as the artist, album, genre, comments, and others. [fn:: Though the standard is designed with MP3 in mind, it can be freely included in other formats such as MP4 or WAV files.]
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- HTML documents contain the [[https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Learn/HTML/Introduction_to_HTML/The_head_metadata_in_HTML][~<head>~]] element to store the metadata.
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However, modern standards such as [[https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extensible_Metadata_Platform][Extensible metadata platform]] (XMP) targets unison of creating metadata among media files: images (e.g., MP3, OGG), videos (e.g., MP4, MKV), documents (e.g., PDF).
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Certain search engines such as Recoll and Tracker currently support searching metadata with XMP.
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To modify the metadata of a file, certain tools such as [[https://exiftool.org/][Exiftool]] and [[https://www.alfresco.com/][Alfresco]] exists.
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The process of manually adding metadata to non-textual files can be tedious but it may be worth the price if we're trying to retrieve some things especially for note-taking or [[file:2020-04-14-18-28-55.org][Maintain your own digital library]].
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This also makes note-taking more dynamic with non-textual files and leverages more attachment to each linked note.
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Beware about caring too much on metadata to the point of our metadata takes more space than the data themsevles.
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Cautionary tales such as [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS_Fnd_in_a_Lbry][MS Fnd in a Lbry]] have been written about it.
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They are, after all, merely data on data;
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if the referred data does not exist in the first place, might as well as the metadata.
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