Mime metadata

  • Resolved Jukka Kähkönen

    (@elkesan)


    7 years, 7 months ago

    Thanks to good plugin. After long training I found one solution MLA cannot do. It is, cook coffee. Can you fix it? Okay :). Looks “if MLA cannot do it, you don’t need it”. Good!

    Earlier I try solve this same:

    First: Image metadata is easy and simple. It is, add metadata to images using any tool, eg. Exiftool. MLA import all this and put all metadata to right places. Keyword, categories, Description etc etc. So, eg. photo gallery is very easy: “Show images with category xx and keywords yy, zz”.

    PDF import work also easily, no big difference with images.

    BUT, now it is BUT. It is two complicate field in pdf: “Description” and “Categories”. “Categories” is semi-standard field and ok if you create pdf-documents only and only with one software. Compare with jpg-files: There is only one place for Categories. In pdf: There is very many table you can put this “Categories”.

    CATEGORIES-problem is quite easy pass: Make PDF using tool you want, but add “categories” using exiftool. Then you can easily select which table you put it, and also import is easy. Still: NON-STANDARD.

    DESCRIPTION. Compare this with image files. There you can use even 2000 character long descripition. You can write even long fairytale to image. But, in pdf: Description is 256 character. Not more. There is NO ANY other field you can use long description. This 256 character is God Word, and you cannot pass it. So: If you accept this 256 and you are sure where table it is, ok. But if you want longer description- nada. Forget it. Only way is import pdf, and write this long description manually, with hand.

    Ok. PDF import is as easy as images, but remember: With pdf-files you can import ONLY basic fields, and it is Keywords. “Categories” and “Description”: Categories, plz forget it, it is not so standard you can import it easily. Description- accept it 256. Looks MLA can handle very complicate metadata, it is, all possible pdf-tables (XMP, etc etc..). But, reason of pdf standard, this “Categories” and “Description” is very, very limited in it standard.

    SO, my question is:
    Any idea how I can import this extra metadata “Categories” and “Description” using any extra file? My idea is: Inside pdf is metadata, and MLA read it as now. But additional metadata, just this “categories” and “Description” from metadata-file. Eg. simply csv-file: filename, categories, Description. Description unlimited as in image files- as I wrote and as you know, it is 2000 character long. This same I dream in pdf-files.

    Eg:
    – I have document “fantasticleaflet1.pdf” and “fantasticleaflet1.csv”- so, pdf-file and metadatafile. In MLA “add new media” read this both and mla use it metadata in csv-file.
    – “Transfer file”. Plugins/MLA/settings there is tab “IPTC/EXIF”. “Execute all rules” re-read metadata. Simply make “specialmetadata.csv”: filename1.pdf, categories, longdesciprtion. Filename2.pdf, categories, longdescription. It is, one csv-file and “Execute all rules” make just what it do, but also read this file. There is many method for this file, but quite easy is download it using direct file transfer (ftp): “public_html/specialmetadatafilefolderisthis”.
    – Any other?

    So: looks it is really just I said, “pdf metadata is very hard to handle; there is no any limit inside MLA, but pdf-standard does not fill my need. There is no clever way handle “Categories”, but worst is, there is no extralongdescription as in image files.” So, only way handle this is make all this manually, “import pdf-file and then edit categories and caption etc”. Or, second way, add this additional metadata to extrametadata-file and read information from extrametadatafile.

    So, is it any method how read this extrametadata?

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  • Plugin Author David Lingren

    (@dglingren)

    7 years, 7 months ago

    Thanks for the kind words and the suggestion to add coffee making to the MLA feature list. I regret that this would entail a hardware solution that is beyond my present capabilities.

    Thanks as well for your comments and questions, which seem like a variation on your earlier topic:

    Metadata other other filetypes than image (pdf)

    Regarding your comments on “Categories” I believe the “Custom property” approach I outlined in the earlier topic would work for you. If you problem is encoding multi-level parent/child term relationships You can have a look at the “MLA Path Mapping Example” plugin, which supports adding path information to term names. The example plugin includes a Settings/Documentation tab that explains how to use it.

    Regarding the extra metadata file proposal, this has come up before, e.g., in this topic:

    Bulk Add Unique Captions

    At this point I have very little time to devote to MLA development, so I cannot promise that the solution outlined in the earlier topic could be completed in the near future. If my circumstances change, perhaps I will consider an example plugin for a future MLA version.

    In the interim I am marking this topic resolved because your two questions have been answered to the best of my current ability. Thanks for your understanding and your continued interest in the plugin.

Viewing 1 replies (of 1 total)

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