3 ms·

File metadata is not cruft. It's a very good thing. Vista's/Win7 Explorer.exe with its metadata columns is GREAT. Even better was Windows (Live) Photo Gallery.

by frik 10y ago

File metadata is not cruft. It's a very good thing. Vista's/Win7 Explorer.exe with its metadata columns is GREAT. Even better was Windows (Live) Photo Gallery. Sadly it's dead since Feb 2017, you can't even install it anymore, as only a now broken WebInstaller exists. Photo Gallery was hand down 1000 times better than Picasa/Lightroom/Photos/iPhotos for just browsing photos and videos. And it alo supported tags with hierarchy (eg "City/New York/Manhattan"). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Photo_Gallery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Photo_Gallery Sadly WinFS failed, metadata is nowadays often misunderstood and persived by companies contra productive in the age of cloud service strategies. Flickr is probably the only well known photo service tht keeps metadata. Facebook made it popular to strip metadata and keep annotations internally (as vendor lockin) - now common also with other services. I hope there will be a kind of come back of metadata. People need more education to understand the concept, that's all.

mathw 10y ago
Sure it's not cruft when they're images in your image library and you need to find them and understand them using said metadata. It's cruft when those assets are now embedded into your compiled, bundled, distributed software and such metadata now has no purpose whatsoever, as is the case for the examples cited in the article.
i336_ 10y ago
> Even better was Windows (Live) Photo Gallery. Sadly it's dead since Feb 2017, you can't even install it anymore, as only a now broken WebInstaller exists. This sounds like a challenge. You're on. - Do some scratching around; discover sites hosting "wlsetup-all.exe" - Point the Web Archive at download.live.com - After some trial and error with broken pages find http://web.archive.org/web/20161130174327/https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/18614/windows-essentials http://web.archive.org/web/20161130174327/https://support.mi... - Follow the "Download options" link - Eventually land on http://web.archive.org/web/20161226002912/https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/17779/download-windows-essentials http://web.archive.org/web/20161226002912/https://support.mi..., and disable JavaScript so the page doesn't kill itself (remember on Chrome you just click the (i) to the left of the URL) - Ah, a "Download Now" link! $ curl -vv http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=255475 Location: http://g.live.com/1rewlive5-web/en/wlsetup-web.exe $ curl -vv http://g.live.com/1rewlive5-web/en/wlsetup-web.exe Location: http://wl.dlservice.microsoft.com/download/C/1/B/C1BA42D6-6A50-4A4A-90E5-FA9347E9360C/en/wlsetup-web.exe Hmm... (note s/web/all/g) $ curl -vv http://g.live.com/1rewlive5-all/en/wlsetup-all.exe Location: http://wl.dlservice.microsoft.com/download/C/1/B/C1BA42D6-6A50-4A4A-90E5-FA9347E9360C/en/wlsetup-all.exe Can I...?... $ curl -vv http://wl.dlservice.microsoft.com/download/C/1/B/C1BA42D6-6A50-4A4A-90E5-FA9347E9360C/en/wlsetup-all.exe < HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found (...) <div id="header"><h1>Server Error</h1></div> (...) <h2>404 - File or directory not found.</h2> <h3>The resource you are looking for might have been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable.</h3> Hmmm. - Try and load wl.dlservice.microsoft.com/robots.txt in the Web Archive - Get redirected to Microsoft homepage!! - Lookup wl.dlservice.microsoft.com/* in Web Archive - "805 URLs have been captured for this domain." - Search for "c1ba..." - get hits! http://web.archive.org/web/20170416220642/http://wl.dlservice.microsoft.com/download/C/1/B/C1BA42D6-6A50-4A4A-90E5-FA9347E9360C/en/wlsetup-all.exe http://web.archive.org/web/20170416220642/http://wl.dlservic... 137329840 bytes. There are other sites that have copies of the file, but a) this one is from the Web Archive and b) I've verified using a mixture of WA and still-live Microsoft redirects that this is the latest-ever release.
- frik 10y ago
  Thanks! I previously copy&pasted the folder to another PC, and manually patched the registry and copied some dlls to get it working.
  - i336_ 10y ago
    Oh, nice. No problem ^^
- acemarke 10y ago
  Just want to say I love it when people do stuff like this. :) I have no need for that app myself, but I appreciate that you took the time to grovel through the guts of several different pages, work around barriers, solve the problem, and document all the steps you took.
VMG 10y ago
> Even better was Windows (Live) Photo Gallery. Sadly it's dead since Feb 2017, you can't even install it anymore, as only a now broken WebInstaller exists. Slightly OT: is there any good photo organizer for windows? I would be happy with sth at the level of shotwell even https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Shotwell https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Shotwell
- frik 10y ago
  digiKam runs on Windows too, it's good, it's open source. But only photos. Photo Gallery supports video too, and is s lot easier to use and has s polished UI and stable path-like-metadata support. DigiKam can read such metadata tags, even edit them but adding new ones is buggy (path like City/New York/Manhattan are then stored as three separate tags City, New York, Manhattan).
daemin 10y ago
The article was talking about adobe image metadata embedded in the explorer.exe executable itself, as metadata inside some png images that explorer uses in its interface. It isn't talking about the metadata columns for files.
- frik 10y ago
  Read the Wikipedia article about XMP. It's a newer metadata format to Exif and IPTC. XMP comes from Adobe, it contains a lot of Adobe strings in the XML schema. I wrote about the metadata handling in Explorer/shell32. It's a light version of what was tried out with WinFS.
  - daemin 10y ago
    Read the article again, take a look at the code. The author is not complaining about Windows Explorer being able to parse and display metadata from PNG files. The author is complaining about how much embedded metadata there is inside PNG files inside the explorer executable file itself, as well as other DLL and EXE files in Windows. The metadata that the author finds is actually inside resources inside the executable itself. It does not include any strings found in the executable which are used to parse the metadata from other files that you have on disk. I'm not saying metadata is cruft. Metadata is very useful during production or for managing art assets. It is however superfluous once it is embedded in an executable or other code library or packed archive. This is simply because its purpose has already been served and it is no longer needed at that point, thus wasting space.
krylon 10y ago
> And it alo supported tags with hierarchy (eg "City/New York/Manhattan"). This is kind of OT, but F-Spot on Linux supported hierarchical tags, as well, and I loved it. Was really sad when it was discontinued and distros replaced it with Shotwell.

by frik 10y ago

mathw 10y ago

Sure it's not cruft when they're images in your image library and you need to find them and understand them using said metadata. It's cruft when those assets are now embedded into your compiled, bundled, distributed software and such metadata now has no purpose whatsoever, as is the case for the examples cited in the article.

i336_ 10y ago

> Even better was Windows (Live) Photo Gallery. Sadly it's dead since Feb 2017, you can't even install it anymore, as only a now broken WebInstaller exists. This sounds like a challenge. You're on. - Do some scratching around; discover sites hosting "wlsetup-all.exe" - Point the Web Archive at download.live.com - After some trial and error with broken pages find http://web.archive.org/web/20161130174327/https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/18614/windows-essentials http://web.archive.org/web/20161130174327/https://support.mi... - Follow the "Download options" link - Eventually land on http://web.archive.org/web/20161226002912/https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/17779/download-windows-essentials http://web.archive.org/web/20161226002912/https://support.mi..., and disable JavaScript so the page doesn't kill itself (remember on Chrome you just click the (i) to the left of the URL) - Ah, a "Download Now" link! $ curl -vv http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=255475 Location: http://g.live.com/1rewlive5-web/en/wlsetup-web.exe $ curl -vv http://g.live.com/1rewlive5-web/en/wlsetup-web.exe Location: http://wl.dlservice.microsoft.com/download/C/1/B/C1BA42D6-6A50-4A4A-90E5-FA9347E9360C/en/wlsetup-web.exe Hmm... (note s/web/all/g) $ curl -vv http://g.live.com/1rewlive5-all/en/wlsetup-all.exe Location: http://wl.dlservice.microsoft.com/download/C/1/B/C1BA42D6-6A50-4A4A-90E5-FA9347E9360C/en/wlsetup-all.exe Can I...?... $ curl -vv http://wl.dlservice.microsoft.com/download/C/1/B/C1BA42D6-6A50-4A4A-90E5-FA9347E9360C/en/wlsetup-all.exe < HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found (...) <div id="header"><h1>Server Error</h1></div> (...) <h2>404 - File or directory not found.</h2> <h3>The resource you are looking for might have been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable.</h3> Hmmm. - Try and load wl.dlservice.microsoft.com/robots.txt in the Web Archive - Get redirected to Microsoft homepage!! - Lookup wl.dlservice.microsoft.com/* in Web Archive - "805 URLs have been captured for this domain." - Search for "c1ba..." - get hits! http://web.archive.org/web/20170416220642/http://wl.dlservice.microsoft.com/download/C/1/B/C1BA42D6-6A50-4A4A-90E5-FA9347E9360C/en/wlsetup-all.exe http://web.archive.org/web/20170416220642/http://wl.dlservic... 137329840 bytes. There are other sites that have copies of the file, but a) this one is from the Web Archive and b) I've verified using a mixture of WA and still-live Microsoft redirects that this is the latest-ever release.

frik 10y ago
Thanks! I previously copy&pasted the folder to another PC, and manually patched the registry and copied some dlls to get it working.
- i336_ 10y ago
  Oh, nice. No problem ^^
acemarke 10y ago
Just want to say I love it when people do stuff like this. :) I have no need for that app myself, but I appreciate that you took the time to grovel through the guts of several different pages, work around barriers, solve the problem, and document all the steps you took.

VMG 10y ago

> Even better was Windows (Live) Photo Gallery. Sadly it's dead since Feb 2017, you can't even install it anymore, as only a now broken WebInstaller exists. Slightly OT: is there any good photo organizer for windows? I would be happy with sth at the level of shotwell even https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Shotwell https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Shotwell

frik 10y ago
digiKam runs on Windows too, it's good, it's open source. But only photos. Photo Gallery supports video too, and is s lot easier to use and has s polished UI and stable path-like-metadata support. DigiKam can read such metadata tags, even edit them but adding new ones is buggy (path like City/New York/Manhattan are then stored as three separate tags City, New York, Manhattan).

daemin 10y ago

The article was talking about adobe image metadata embedded in the explorer.exe executable itself, as metadata inside some png images that explorer uses in its interface. It isn't talking about the metadata columns for files.

frik 10y ago
Read the Wikipedia article about XMP. It's a newer metadata format to Exif and IPTC. XMP comes from Adobe, it contains a lot of Adobe strings in the XML schema. I wrote about the metadata handling in Explorer/shell32. It's a light version of what was tried out with WinFS.
- daemin 10y ago
  Read the article again, take a look at the code. The author is not complaining about Windows Explorer being able to parse and display metadata from PNG files. The author is complaining about how much embedded metadata there is inside PNG files inside the explorer executable file itself, as well as other DLL and EXE files in Windows. The metadata that the author finds is actually inside resources inside the executable itself. It does not include any strings found in the executable which are used to parse the metadata from other files that you have on disk. I'm not saying metadata is cruft. Metadata is very useful during production or for managing art assets. It is however superfluous once it is embedded in an executable or other code library or packed archive. This is simply because its purpose has already been served and it is no longer needed at that point, thus wasting space.

krylon 10y ago

> And it alo supported tags with hierarchy (eg "City/New York/Manhattan"). This is kind of OT, but F-Spot on Linux supported hierarchical tags, as well, and I loved it. Was really sad when it was discontinued and distros replaced it with Shotwell.