I think that it's reasonable for GlassElevator to go a bit farther here and for starters I propose that we first push a little more on the PersonalDigitalAssistant level. In particular I think that we should try to tackle EventFiles, which can help represent holidays, appointments, birthdays, dance classes, etc.

It would also be nice to have a standard set of attribute names for common things. I like to mix different kinds of files in the same directory, but having different attribute names for common things is annoying: MAIL:subject and PINEAPPLE:subject (and half a dozen other similar ones) contain essentially the same info but display in separate columns in Tracker and require different queries when searching.

Instead, how about using standard names? A starting point could be the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative. See the FAQ at http://dublincore.org/ for more. Another starting point is the HTTP standard (RFC 2616), for header things like Content-Length, Content-Language, Expires (could be useful for files that self destruct at a certain date). Plus some BeOS specific ones, so long as they are used by several different applications.

- Alex

Dublic Core is and International Standard developed and used by libraries and other information organisations.

Attributes are encoded as Authority : Name : Qualifier : Encoding.

• DCMD:LANGUAGE::RFC-1766 Language used in the content. RFC 1766

• DCMD::LANGUAGE:RFC-1766 Language used in the attributes. RFC 1766

• DCMD:TITLE Formal Title of the Content

• DCMD:CREATOR::CDL Creator's of the Content. As a comma delimited list.

• DCMD:CONTRIBUTOR::CDL Creator to the Content. As a comma delimited list.

  Optional

• DCMD:PUBLISHER::CDL Publisher of the Content. As a comma delimited list.

  Optional

• DCMD:SUBJECT Keywords describing the Content. As a comma delimited list.

  DCMD:SUBJECT:AUTHORITY:URI Authority controlling the vocabulary of words. Preferablely a URI to a local or global resource containing all allowed words.

• DCMD:DESCRIPTION Creator to the Content. As plain text.

  Optional

• DCMD:DATE:CREATED:W3C-DTF Date of creation. As a W3C-DTF date.

  DCMD:DATE:AVAILABLE:W3C-DTF Date of release. As a W3C-DTF date.

  Optional

  DCMD:DATE:MODIFIED:W3C-DTF Date of last modification. As a W3C-DTF date.

• DCMD:FORMAT::MIME Encoding of content. As a MIME name.

• DCMD:FORMAT:EXTENT Content size, in bytes.

• DCMD:IDENTIFIER::URI Universal Identifier of this resource. As a URI. Optional

• DCMD:RIGHTS:USER:DRM-CDL Rights of user of content. It is recomended a fixed IETF/W3C vocabulary is created/used. Optional.

• DCMD:SOURCE::URI Where this content was derived from. As a URI. Optional

• DCMD:RELATION:*:URI A collection of attributes describing the contents relation.

- Mat Hounsell

OK, but I want to use short names for those attributes. That's an extra reason for trying aliases for attribute names in my experimental file system (the other reason is for making MAIL:subject and PINEAPPLE:subject be equivalent).

- Alex

Another format worth looking at:

vCalendar

and vCard. Those are standard formats (even Outlook supports them somewhat... Linux apps like KOrganizer and GnomeCalendar uses them as native storage).