LWN: Comments on "Pasting images with automatic attribution"

Pasting images with automatic attribution

Seegras — 2013-10-03T15:19:33+00:00

> The best bet for embedding metadata seems to be XMP, which allows
> structured, extensible data. It is supported by PNG, JPG, TIFF and PDF,
> at least when the tools don't strip it.

Yes, and you should use embedded metadata. Always.

In the end, there are NOT many file formats you really need. For Images, its basically PNG, JPG, TIFF; for vectors its SVG, for (finished) Documents its PDF, DJVU and EPUB, for Music its MP3, OGM and FLAC, for Movies its MKV, and maybe MP4. Everything else can be converted.

I wrote some scripts and such for coping with embedded metadata:
http://seegras.discordia.ch/Blog/category/computers/metad... and
http://seegras.discordia.ch/Programs/ (namely, in the above context, exif-rename and exif-meta, which will work with exif, but are mostly about XMP).

Pasting images with automatic attribution

petli — 2013-09-27T11:23:11+00:00

The best bet for embedding metadata seems to be XMP, which allows structured, extensible data. It is supported by PNG, JPG, TIFF and PDF, at least when the tools don't strip it.

Pasting images with automatic attribution

petli — 2013-09-27T11:19:39+00:00

Thank's for a very good question! I wrote a follow-up blog post to answer it in more detail than what fits here:
http://commonsmachinery.se/2013/09/embedded-or-linked-met...

The short version is that it was much easier to do this demonstration with linked metadata. Firefox, GTK and many, many other systems routinely discard embedded metadata. It is still an open question if the answer is to give up embedded metadata, or try to fix all the tools.

Pasting images with automatic attribution

sorpigal — 2013-09-27T10:36:52+00:00

GIF doesn't do metadata in any useful way. PNG meta data is either limited or not standardized. JPEG meta data has several formats which are not consistently supported.

A single standard that doesn't care about image format seems simpler to me.

Pasting images with automatic attribution

ballombe — 2013-09-27T09:09:12+00:00

All the standard image format allow to embed metadata.
Why not store attribution there ? This would be simpler and more robust.