Custom metadata fields are not supported, except to the extent that each importer can define its own schema.
Extended file system metadata is not going to be supported because it's not filesystem-agnostic. The idea is that we're going to broaden support for new filesystems, not restrict it.
Spotlight is a search tool, not an asset-management database.
Although, sooner or later someone will probably just write a plug-in that imports any extended file system metadata for any file.
No, they won't, because attributes can't be defined at run-time. They're defined in a schema file that's a part of the importer package.
Gonna say it again: Spotlight is a search tool, not a database.
Well, I can see why "please spend a bunch of time to rewrite your storage format so it works better with our OS feature" isn't particularly high on the list for the Entourage folks.
How about "please spend a bunch of time to rewrite your storage format so it doesn't completely implode if a single byte gets written incorrectly?" Or how about "please spend a bunch of time to rewrite your storage format so it doesn't crap out when it hits two gigabytes?"
Or how about "please spend a bunch of time to rewrite your storage format in order to make your users happy?" That's my favorite.
Or better yet, AIAT/V-Twin/SearchKit- which was Apple's pride and joy of searching and the Next! Cool! Thing! for search a couple of years ago?
Um. You do know that Spotlight is basically Search Kit 2.0, right? It's based on, and is backwards compatible with, Search Kit.
What I have to say is the same thing I've said to everybody else who's complained: There's no accounting for taste. "I don't like the buttons" is not a bug.
Nobody is forced to upgrade. Mac OS X 10.3 will continue to be supported. We just released Safari 1.3 with lots of enhancements last week, and we released QuickTime 7 with H.264 support for Panther this morning.
If your sister wants great new features, she should buy the upgrade. If she doesn't, she shouldn't.
Or, you know. You could be a really awesome brother and buy it for her.;-)
Sure, you can do that. You can do it from the installer. Each partition shows up to the operating system like a separate volume.
One of the most important things we abandoned when evolving our operating system from Unix was the idea of separate, hidden partitions for things like virtual memory stores. All of Mac OS X runs on a single, user-visible partition. Which means you can trivially split your hard drive up into separate partitions and run different instances of Mac OS X on them.
Nearly two years ago, we went to Microsoft's Mac BU and said, "We've got this new thing going on, and you're going to want to change the way Entourage stores its data." We told them all about Spotlight and how it indexes individual files and associates them with key-value attributes. We showed them the way we were redesigning Mail, and the workarounds we were going to employ for Address Book and iCal.
Their response? "Meh."
We fully expected to see a complete rewrite of the Entourage data format in Office 2004, but it didn't happen. Instead, Microsoft's guys said that they wanted to work with us to make Spotlight index their database.
Well, that's really not what Spotlight's designed to do, see. It's not that we won't make it do that. It's just that that's now how it's designed to work.
So now we have really excellent metadata importers for all the Office file formats... except the Entourage database.
Last I heard, we were still doing the back-and-forth with Microsoft. Not sure where that's going to end up.
Your roommate got her facts wrong. Last time it was 8. The Tiger events start at 6 at all Apple stores (that's local 6, wherever you happen to be).
Official company policy is that events end at midnight; you don't have to go home, but you can't stay here. In practice, the unofficial under-the-table policy to local store managers is, "Stay open until everybody's happy."
At the "Night of the Panther" event in 2003, one store -- I can't remember which one, but I want to say it was one of the ones in Texas -- stayed open until 6:00 the next morning. They did more business that one night than they did the previous month.
I wish I could remember which store that was. That's gonna bug me all day.
Your computer came with a CD labeled something along the lines of "Hardware Test." (The exact verbiage varies from computer to computer.) Stick it in, boot the computer with the "c" key held down on the keyboard to force it to run from the disc.
Run the hardware test suite. This will identify any failing RAM by slot for you.
You should probably be aware that that's a really good way to destroy your iPod.
The hard drive in the iPod isn't designed for sustained use. Booting off of it and installing Tiger should probably take about a half hour. That might be okay. But it's an oft-repeated and I think true story that one of the engineers somewhere here on campus installed Mac OS X Server onto his iPod for testing and booted it up in a lab.
The iPod froze up after eighteen hours. The hard drive completely failed.
You know, there's really practically no demand for it. Microsoft Office 2004 is pretty amazing, albeit not perfect. Everybody who needs it, already has it.
And everybody who doesn't need it can get Pages and Keynote for $79.
I think that this is one of the features of Tiger that should be cloned ported to Linux
Please don't. We're releasing it as part of Darwin for a reason. Please don't waste all that time re-implementing what we created in a similar but not entirely compatible fashion. Just use our code, then invest your time doing something new and wonderful.
Kerning is supported in X font renderers. Stop spreading false informations.
I'm sure that's true. But it ain't workin'. Go look for yourself. Type Wo or Ya or Tu and tell me that they look right to you. Get somebody to fix it and I will happily stop spreading false informations.
I removed the/etc/rcX directories completely
That's fine. I was talking about/etc/rc, though, not the scripts under/etc/rc.d. When you typed "/etc/rcX," I was confused about what you meant. Sorry about that.
If you hose/etc/rc or/etc/inittab, your system will not boot. Jacking with init scripts like/etc/rc.d and/etc/init.d and other service config files like/etc/crontab will result in other run-time errors, but they probably won't be system-fatal.
That's quite different from "being harrassed by lawyers".
So if it were just the torch-and-pitchfork-waving Internet mob and not Moglen and his cadre of fanatics, that would somehow be okay with you?
Yes, I certainly did. The lesson? You have a very, very long way to go. I mean come on. Environment variables? And four different ones at that?
In order to localize, you have to adapt not just the UI language, but the number and currency formats, date and time formats, the system calendar and measurement units. For example, if you pick up your computer and move it to Tel Aviv, you have to switch the language to Hebrew and the writing system to right-to-left. You have to use the Hebrew calendar instead of the Gregorian calendar. You have to use 24-hour time instead of 12-hour time. You do get to continue to use the ###,###.## number format, but you have to switch currency units to the new sheqel and units of measurement to metric.
That's localization. Linux can't even approximate it yet.
Network autoconfiguration tools existed for a long time before Rendezvous.
You know we're not talking about DHCP here, right? We're talking about the fact that the routing table dynamically reconfigures itself based on available interfaces via configd. We're talking about the fact that if you're currently using your AirPort card and you plug in to an Ethernet port, all your services will invisibly move over to the new port instantly without interruption.
Beyond that, yes, we have Bonjour. Which, incidentally, we give away for free in a POSIX-compliant reference implementation on our Web site.
The goal of ZeroConf was to provide a way to do it (for network services) without the need of a server.
And that would have been really cool, had anybody actually done anything about it. Nobody did until we came along. We took the Zeroconf spec and turned it into Rendezvous, which thanks to a trademark settlement is now Bonjour. In the process, we built it into everything, created a compliance logo program for it, and distributed reference implementations to vendors. Now Bonjour is built into every network printer... thanks to us.
Quoting the same article again: When a file does appear in that directory, cron automatically starts running.
I've lost track of which article you're quoting. But believe me, okay? I'm sitting in front of a computer with Tiger right this very second. The cron daemon is not running.
How is a blind person supposed to read a lengthy tutorial? Aside from that, the document you refer to consists of a lengthy list of third-party work-arounds for services that should be a core part of the operating system. Should be? No, in this case, they have to be. It's a bootstrap probl
Seriously: Keep your expectations low. The 10.4 release of Spotlight is designed to be a search tool, not a database. User-design schemas are not supported. Schemas are tied to importers, which in turn are tied to file types in a one-to-many relationship. (One importer can handle more than one file type, but mdimport only calls one importer for each file.)
Yes, we did add extended attributes to Darwin in version 8. But our Spotlight importers do not look for them.
In theory, you could write your own importer that would extract key-value pairs from extended attributes and add them to the metadata store, but there are some significant technical problems with that. It's got to do with the way we define the Spotlight schema --importers define their own attributes; importers can't create new attributes at run-time.
It will be a lot easier to just add the project information into the metadata than rely on a fixed directory structure.
Um. I really don't want you to buy Tiger and then be disappointed.
Spotlight isn't a general-purpose annotation system. In order for you to apply metadata to files, you have to have three things. First, a file format that supports metadata. (Metadata is actually stored inside files.) Two, an application that supports adding metadata. And finally, you have to have a Spotlight importer that extracts the metadata.
Example: Adobe has not yet shipped (for some bafflingly reason) their importers for their file formats. These importers will be able to read XMP metadata and store it in Spotlight. But right now, they're not available. So if you want to add Spotlight-savvy metadata to an InDesign file, you are completely out of luck. It can't be done, no way, no how.
Spotlight is great. I love Spotlight. Spotlight has changed the way I work. But if you go into it hoping that Spotlight is gonna do a whole bunch of things that it's just not equipped to do right now, you're going to be pissed. And I don't want you to be pissed.
Now, that said, you can group all JPEG files together based on width and height criteria. That works fine. And you can use Spotlight comments to store free-form, unstructured metadata. But don't hope that Spotlight is a general-purpose file annotation system. It's not. At least not in this release.
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Custom metadata fields are not supported, except to the extent that each importer can define its own schema.
Extended file system metadata is not going to be supported because it's not filesystem-agnostic. The idea is that we're going to broaden support for new filesystems, not restrict it.
Spotlight is a search tool, not an asset-management database.
Although, sooner or later someone will probably just write a plug-in that imports any extended file system metadata for any file.
No, they won't, because attributes can't be defined at run-time. They're defined in a schema file that's a part of the importer package.
Gonna say it again: Spotlight is a search tool, not a database.
Well, I can see why "please spend a bunch of time to rewrite your storage format so it works better with our OS feature" isn't particularly high on the list for the Entourage folks.
How about "please spend a bunch of time to rewrite your storage format so it doesn't completely implode if a single byte gets written incorrectly?" Or how about "please spend a bunch of time to rewrite your storage format so it doesn't crap out when it hits two gigabytes?"
Or how about "please spend a bunch of time to rewrite your storage format in order to make your users happy?" That's my favorite.
Or better yet, AIAT/V-Twin/SearchKit- which was Apple's pride and joy of searching and the Next! Cool! Thing! for search a couple of years ago?
Um. You do know that Spotlight is basically Search Kit 2.0, right? It's based on, and is backwards compatible with, Search Kit.
I was referring to copies of Tiger. Like, the box on the shelf with the DVD in it.
Yes, we frequently run out of stock of computers and iPods. It's a pain-in-the-ass consequence of selling 'em faster than we can build 'em.
What I have to say is the same thing I've said to everybody else who's complained: There's no accounting for taste. "I don't like the buttons" is not a bug.
Yes, Spotlight indexes non-root volumes. And you don't need to set up mounts; diskarbitrationd handles that for you.
It's already there: "Add Spotlight comments to files."
Nobody is forced to upgrade. Mac OS X 10.3 will continue to be supported. We just released Safari 1.3 with lots of enhancements last week, and we released QuickTime 7 with H.264 support for Panther this morning.
;-)
If your sister wants great new features, she should buy the upgrade. If she doesn't, she shouldn't.
Or, you know. You could be a really awesome brother and buy it for her.
Sure, you can do that. You can do it from the installer. Each partition shows up to the operating system like a separate volume.
One of the most important things we abandoned when evolving our operating system from Unix was the idea of separate, hidden partitions for things like virtual memory stores. All of Mac OS X runs on a single, user-visible partition. Which means you can trivially split your hard drive up into separate partitions and run different instances of Mac OS X on them.
We have wildly overstocked retail stores with copies of Tiger. We don't expect any of the stores to run out tonight.
Seriously: wildly overstocked. Like you wouldn't believe.
There's an interesting story behind that.
... except the Entourage database.
Nearly two years ago, we went to Microsoft's Mac BU and said, "We've got this new thing going on, and you're going to want to change the way Entourage stores its data." We told them all about Spotlight and how it indexes individual files and associates them with key-value attributes. We showed them the way we were redesigning Mail, and the workarounds we were going to employ for Address Book and iCal.
Their response? "Meh."
We fully expected to see a complete rewrite of the Entourage data format in Office 2004, but it didn't happen. Instead, Microsoft's guys said that they wanted to work with us to make Spotlight index their database.
Well, that's really not what Spotlight's designed to do, see. It's not that we won't make it do that. It's just that that's now how it's designed to work.
So now we have really excellent metadata importers for all the Office file formats
Last I heard, we were still doing the back-and-forth with Microsoft. Not sure where that's going to end up.
Your roommate got her facts wrong. Last time it was 8. The Tiger events start at 6 at all Apple stores (that's local 6, wherever you happen to be).
Official company policy is that events end at midnight; you don't have to go home, but you can't stay here. In practice, the unofficial under-the-table policy to local store managers is, "Stay open until everybody's happy."
At the "Night of the Panther" event in 2003, one store -- I can't remember which one, but I want to say it was one of the ones in Texas -- stayed open until 6:00 the next morning. They did more business that one night than they did the previous month.
I wish I could remember which store that was. That's gonna bug me all day.
You know we've been selling Macs for 21 years, right?
Your computer came with a CD labeled something along the lines of "Hardware Test." (The exact verbiage varies from computer to computer.) Stick it in, boot the computer with the "c" key held down on the keyboard to force it to run from the disc.
Run the hardware test suite. This will identify any failing RAM by slot for you.
You should probably be aware that that's a really good way to destroy your iPod.
The hard drive in the iPod isn't designed for sustained use. Booting off of it and installing Tiger should probably take about a half hour. That might be okay. But it's an oft-repeated and I think true story that one of the engineers somewhere here on campus installed Mac OS X Server onto his iPod for testing and booted it up in a lab.
The iPod froze up after eighteen hours. The hard drive completely failed.
Just FYI. Caveat emptor and all that.
Oh, don't worry. Jon Hicks will probably have a new set of toolbar icons out by the end of the day. ;-)
You know, there's really practically no demand for it. Microsoft Office 2004 is pretty amazing, albeit not perfect. Everybody who needs it, already has it.
And everybody who doesn't need it can get Pages and Keynote for $79.
I think that this is one of the features of Tiger that should be cloned ported to Linux
Please don't. We're releasing it as part of Darwin for a reason. Please don't waste all that time re-implementing what we created in a similar but not entirely compatible fashion. Just use our code, then invest your time doing something new and wonderful.
Kerning is supported in X font renderers. Stop spreading false informations.
/etc/rcX directories completely
/etc/rc, though, not the scripts under /etc/rc.d. When you typed "/etc/rcX," I was confused about what you meant. Sorry about that.
/etc/rc or /etc/inittab, your system will not boot. Jacking with init scripts like /etc/rc.d and /etc/init.d and other service config files like /etc/crontab will result in other run-time errors, but they probably won't be system-fatal.
... thanks to us.
I'm sure that's true. But it ain't workin'. Go look for yourself. Type Wo or Ya or Tu and tell me that they look right to you. Get somebody to fix it and I will happily stop spreading false informations.
I removed the
That's fine. I was talking about
If you hose
That's quite different from "being harrassed by lawyers".
So if it were just the torch-and-pitchfork-waving Internet mob and not Moglen and his cadre of fanatics, that would somehow be okay with you?
I am also sure you'll find websites like http://i18n.kde.org/ worth reading.
Yes, I certainly did. The lesson? You have a very, very long way to go. I mean come on. Environment variables? And four different ones at that?
In order to localize, you have to adapt not just the UI language, but the number and currency formats, date and time formats, the system calendar and measurement units. For example, if you pick up your computer and move it to Tel Aviv, you have to switch the language to Hebrew and the writing system to right-to-left. You have to use the Hebrew calendar instead of the Gregorian calendar. You have to use 24-hour time instead of 12-hour time. You do get to continue to use the ###,###.## number format, but you have to switch currency units to the new sheqel and units of measurement to metric.
That's localization. Linux can't even approximate it yet.
Network autoconfiguration tools existed for a long time before Rendezvous.
You know we're not talking about DHCP here, right? We're talking about the fact that the routing table dynamically reconfigures itself based on available interfaces via configd. We're talking about the fact that if you're currently using your AirPort card and you plug in to an Ethernet port, all your services will invisibly move over to the new port instantly without interruption.
Beyond that, yes, we have Bonjour. Which, incidentally, we give away for free in a POSIX-compliant reference implementation on our Web site.
The goal of ZeroConf was to provide a way to do it (for network services) without the need of a server.
And that would have been really cool, had anybody actually done anything about it. Nobody did until we came along. We took the Zeroconf spec and turned it into Rendezvous, which thanks to a trademark settlement is now Bonjour. In the process, we built it into everything, created a compliance logo program for it, and distributed reference implementations to vendors. Now Bonjour is built into every network printer
Quoting the same article again: When a file does appear in that directory, cron automatically starts running.
I've lost track of which article you're quoting. But believe me, okay? I'm sitting in front of a computer with Tiger right this very second. The cron daemon is not running.
See for example http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Accessibility-HOWTO/
How is a blind person supposed to read a lengthy tutorial? Aside from that, the document you refer to consists of a lengthy list of third-party work-arounds for services that should be a core part of the operating system. Should be? No, in this case, they have to be. It's a bootstrap probl
Seriously: Keep your expectations low. The 10.4 release of Spotlight is designed to be a search tool, not a database. User-design schemas are not supported. Schemas are tied to importers, which in turn are tied to file types in a one-to-many relationship. (One importer can handle more than one file type, but mdimport only calls one importer for each file.)
Yes, we did add extended attributes to Darwin in version 8. But our Spotlight importers do not look for them.
In theory, you could write your own importer that would extract key-value pairs from extended attributes and add them to the metadata store, but there are some significant technical problems with that. It's got to do with the way we define the Spotlight schema --importers define their own attributes; importers can't create new attributes at run-time.
I know that it looks into word docs, but does it look at word doc metadata (file, properties).
Yes, it does. You'll be pleased.
We've been using GCC 4 internally since the winter of 2003. It was only released by the Gnu guys recently.
Oops. I was being careless and hit the "anonymous" button when I was trying to preview. Sorry. The above comment is mine.
Steve would have used Bertrand instead of George, and he would have said "Boom" instead of "Poof."
;-)
I'm clearly not Steve Jobs.
It will be a lot easier to just add the project information into the metadata than rely on a fixed directory structure.
Um. I really don't want you to buy Tiger and then be disappointed.
Spotlight isn't a general-purpose annotation system. In order for you to apply metadata to files, you have to have three things. First, a file format that supports metadata. (Metadata is actually stored inside files.) Two, an application that supports adding metadata. And finally, you have to have a Spotlight importer that extracts the metadata.
Example: Adobe has not yet shipped (for some bafflingly reason) their importers for their file formats. These importers will be able to read XMP metadata and store it in Spotlight. But right now, they're not available. So if you want to add Spotlight-savvy metadata to an InDesign file, you are completely out of luck. It can't be done, no way, no how.
Spotlight is great. I love Spotlight. Spotlight has changed the way I work. But if you go into it hoping that Spotlight is gonna do a whole bunch of things that it's just not equipped to do right now, you're going to be pissed. And I don't want you to be pissed.
Now, that said, you can group all JPEG files together based on width and height criteria. That works fine. And you can use Spotlight comments to store free-form, unstructured metadata. But don't hope that Spotlight is a general-purpose file annotation system. It's not. At least not in this release.