[linux-audio-dev] Plugin APIs (again)

Steve Harris S.W.Harris at ecs.soton.ac.uk
Wed Dec 4 04:20:01 UTC 2002


On Wed, Dec 04, 2002 at 01:26:04 +1100, Conrad Parker wrote:
> I have to say I agree with Tim here -- internal, inseparable strings are
> much simpler for both the host and plugin authors to deal with, and don't
> force apps to link against random external libraries (xml or rdf or
> whatever) just to get at a few necessary strings. The core stuff (name,
> description etc.) is not actually "meta" at all, they're fields which just
> happen to be of string type.

For the stuff that is acutally vital, UID, version, instrument name,
whatever, then yes. But anything more sophisticated than that /really/
should be external. Internalised metadata systems invariably end up being
inadequet, clumsy or just useless (ala LADSPA).

Better to accept form the start that you are going to have to use external
metadata if you want to express anything complex. Once the instrument
standard is complex enough that it requires a library anyway (eg. for
timestamped event handling), you may as well provide decent, extensible
metadata support.

Do a web search if you want to find a million and one bad experiences with
internal metadata. Its pretty much a non-decision in the digital libraries
and knowledge management world now.

> For stuff that is actually metadata (keywords, location of publication etc.)
> ... if you want to reference external metadata by unique id, I propose that
> the data type of the unique id be a URL :)

URI maybe, but a URL requires a network connection, so its not ideal.

- Steve



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