[Zope-CMF] Extensible Metadata

Jeffrey P Shell jeffrey@cuemedia.com
Mon, 05 Aug 2002 12:09:41 -0600


On 8/5/02 10:51 AM, "Noa Harvey" <noa@adequat.net> wrote:

> I agree with this need, adding metadata is too clumsy nowdays.
> The metadatatool doesnt provide enough services to make it worhtwile to
> register metadata in it :(
> 
> I don't think changing Dublin core would be correct, I just think that
> the metadata tool should provide automatic form generation, and services
> for changing an object's metadata. Also, the possibility to have
> epressions that are more complex then just lists of suggested values.

There is a collection of links and proposals at
http://cmf.zope.org/rqmts/proposals/metadata

I wrote up a proposal, or started one, back when I was at Zope corp to
address some of this issue.  For what you 'just think that the metadata tool
should...', it's not all THAT easy.  Not difficult, but not easy.  Part of
the CMF philosophy is that you should just replace it with your own metadata
tool that does what you need/want it to do.  I have a small collection of
customized CMF and other tool-ish objects that I use internally for some of
our projects that give us the specific types of control that we need.

My half-finished proposal, which there was some contention about at the
time, is now viewable in the Dogbowl:
http://cmf.zope.org/Members/jshell/metadata.html

It doesn't deal with things like automatic form generation (a concept that
sometimes makes me queasy), but it does try to deal with issues like how to
translate/interpret/encode Dublin Core data.  It's an old document, and it's
basically just a dump from my outliner, but it might still have some
relevant ideas.

-- 
Jeffrey P Shell 
www.cuemedia.com