2.5 KiB
Executable File
File metadata
File metadata is one of the most subtle requirements in Personal information management (or at least, that's what I think). With the right tools such as desktop search engines (see Add a desktop search engine for your digital library), you can quickly retrieve information as well as preserve some of its related information. Each type of files have different ways of embedding metadata.
- Image files such as JPEG or PNG, metadata are embedded in Exchangeable image file format (EXIF) and you can modify it with various tools such as ExifTool.
- MP3 files have the ID3 as the de-facto standard for embedding contextual information such as the artist, album, genre, comments, and others. 1
- HTML documents contain the
<head>element to store the metadata.
However, modern standards such as 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). Certain search engines such as Recoll and Tracker currently support searching metadata with XMP.
To modify the metadata of a file, certain tools such as Exiftool and Alfresco exists. 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 Maintain your own digital library. This also makes note-taking more dynamic with non-textual files and leverages more attachment to each linked note.
Beware about caring too much on metadata to the point of our metadata takes more space than the data themsevles. Cautionary tales such as MS Fnd in a Lbry have been written about it. They are, after all, merely data on data; if the referred data does not exist in the first place, might as well as the metadata.
Though the standard is designed with MP3 in mind, it can be freely included in other formats such as MP4 or WAV files.