A friend was just at apple's WWDC conference here in SF where the
spotlight feature was announced. Apparently the plan is to use a
SQL-based database to contain the indexing, i.e. much faster and more
efficient than Sherlock's content indexing. (however, walt is right
about the concept, and I'm sure there will be indexing. Supposedly
controllable, and ostensibly more efficient than the big flat file
sherlock used.)
I, for one, am excited about the possibilities. I hope it's possible
to read and write the metadata from the OS, via scripting or
whatever. In my line of work, it's *very* useful to attatch metadata
directly to files, since the files get copied and moved and
reorganized and even haphazardly renamed all the time as they flow
through projects. Storing the metadata in the file assures that you
know what's what in a way that an external database can't.
I also use (and am the developer of) a filemaker-based database for
searching, retrieval, conversion and project tracking of sound
assets. In this case the metadata is stored in the DB, and the files
are not moved or renamed etc.
Spotlight could be cool if it's done right. That remains to be seen.
-jeremiah
>From: "oryoki2000" <>
>
>>
>> Developers were given a glimpse of the next version of the Macintosh
>> OS at the recent Apple conference in San Francisco. Most interesting
>> is the search feature called Spotlight. Spotlight runs in the
>> background, building indexes of your files, so searches happen very
>> quickly.
>>
>> The most interesting feature of Spotlight is its ability to
>> automatically index file metadata. If this includes the metadata in
>> Broadcast WAV (BWF) format, Spotlight will make it much easier to
>> manage a library of sound recordings.
>>
>> I haven't owned a Macintosh in more than 15 years. But it's looking
>> like my next computer may be a Mac.
>
>This sounds like a minor variant of the older version of Sherlock, which
>could index all text content of all files. And was extremely annoying.
>Running in the background indexing a hundred gigs of files every so
>often. I turned it off. Last iteration of that would sometimes get it
>into it's head that you wanted a index of the entire internet as well,
>and start in on that. Latest Sherlock is almost entirely a internet
>searcher. Though there still is a find in the finder for finding files
>on your local system. I assume they are expanding that, putting back in
>what they had before, but not letting it link to the internet. And, if
>it's typical of the way they have implemented features lately, it will
>be impossible to turn off it's endless indexing. I'm not looking forward
>to such a feature. I use a proper database that I control to handle
>indexing my sound recordings.
>
>I do recommend mac over windows, though the advantages are not as great
>as they used to be since the command line unix folks took over. It's
>being slowly ground down to windows level of functionality. Won't be
>noticed by folks new to it, but people like me who have seen all phases
>of Macs do see the considerable failures of the current OS writers. In
>some of the most basic things.
>
>And, as I understand it, Apple has or will introduce some G5 systems
>that require liquid cooling of their processors. So the advantage in
>heat production seems to have been lost too.
>
>I'm kind of hoping that windows will eventually become a acceptable OS,
>before Apple makes theirs completely unusable. And get moved to a more
>modern processor.
>
>Walt
>
>
>
>
>
>"Microphones are not ears,
>Loudspeakers are not birds,
>A listening room is not nature."
>Klas Strandberg
>Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>
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jeremiah lyman moore | san francisco | sound+media |
http://babyjane.com/timeweb/
http://northstation.net/ organic, mechanized, organized sound
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