[X Newbies] jpegs, etc.

[Vincent Cayenne]

At 3:35p -0400 2003.05.20, Florin Alexander Neumann wrote:
>>No, the information remained in the individual files.
>
>I'm afraid you're wrong. This data was not held in the resource 
>fork. It's fairly easy to check: use ResEdit to open a document such 
>as a plain-text file (without state or other extraneous info) or a 
>Word document. ResEdit will tell you it has no resource fork -- yet 
>it still has type and creator codes. (Btw, anything stored in the 
>resource fork is not metadata, since the resource fork is part of 
>the file, i.e., of the data.)

Thanks for the correction. My bad <g>. But doesn't this mean that the 
data _is_ in the individual files?

And of course I may again bear correction, but I'm confused - why 
can't metadata (data about the data) be part of the data? I used to 
write file headers and such that contained information about the rest 
of the content and never realised that it wasn't metadata.

>
>meta-data
>
><data> /me't*-day`t*/, or combinations of /may'-/ or
>(Commonwealth) /mee'-/; /-dah`t*/ (Or "meta data") Data about
>data. In data processing, meta-data is definitional data
>that provides information about or documentation of other data
>managed within an application or environment.
>
>For example, meta-data would document data about data
>elements or attributes, (name, size, data type, etc) and
>data about records or data structures (length, fields,
>columns, etc) and data about data (where it is located, how it
>is associated, ownership, etc.). Meta-data may include
>descriptive information about the context, quality and
>condition, or characteristics of the data.
>
>The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing, © 1993-2003 Denis Howe

This search also made me wiser as I discovered that "Metadata" is an 
Incontestable
registered U.S. Trademark. Go figure. So I'll begin to use meta-data...
-- 
'tis as said. [Reality is defined by being described]