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Meaningful filenames

44 bytes added, 07:15, 16 August 2008
Why meaningful filenames
* Data about data (called ''metadata'', ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metadata Wikipedia's ''Metadata'' entry]) can also be stored inside the file it describes, for example:
** HTML, the language of webpages, uses tags like ''<span style="normalText">Example</span>''. Here the meta data describes the style of the text, ie: ''Example'' is ''normalText''
** EXIF ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exchangeable_image_file_format Wikipedia's ''EXIF'' entry]) is a way of storing meta data in image files, like when the photo was taken and what type of camera was used.
* Database systems (GRAMPS is a database system for genealogy) can store a huge amount of data about data. They're are very efficient at this job and very powerful.
** Google Search uses a database to remember what web pages are about, and tells you when you ask
So why not use one of those options?
* EXIF is great, but only for some types of files(not supported in JPEG 2000, PNG, or GIF), there are lots of different systems for different types of files. People are working hard to improve this situation all the time.
* HTML is great if you can store all your information as HTML files, but HTML files cannot contain other files, they just point to them. So we'd basically end up making a website about our files.
* A database, well we already use this when we use GRAMPS. The GRAMPS database stores lots of information about the files and records it records. But GRAMPS does not store the actual file inside the database. If the connection between GRAMPS and the data it is describing is broken, then the files are just files. They contain no more information than they did when you first ''imported'' them into GRAMPS.

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