metadata

MDX 2010 FTW!

With a Drupal Beta planned for May 21, the time is coming for a Media Beta as well! Before we can do that, however, there are a few loose ends to tie up. I've identified two critical pieces for a happy Developer's eXperience (DX) before I'll be happy doing that. There are certainly more: see the Media issue queue for more.

MetaData Handling

The Media module creates Media entity objects, which are fieldable. That means we can already attach any fields or taxonomy to any media object, which goes a long way towards handling metadata. However, Media metadata needs are variable and complex. For instance, a field might be fine for adding a taxonomy vocabulary for Video genre or Bird species, but you would need something better if you want to automatically add video duration, YouTube categories, or grab a music file's getID3 data. Basically, we need a larger discussion of what's necessary, what's possible, and how we get there. See this Media metadata issue for more background.

Display Formatting

Currently, we're using the Styles module to power display formatting. We may or may not continue using that. In any case, we'll need to ensure the formatters more closely follow Media Types, and we'll need to offer a pluggable UI for changing formatter style presets, similar to Image Styles (Imagecache in core, for those not yet familiar).

Media DX Summit 2010?

I'd love to lock up some fellow developers for a couple of days in a room to bang on these ideas. At the same time, my partner Gwen is due on May 22 for our second child, so firstly, I can't really travel any time in the foreseeable future, and secondly, even if we had a summit here in Harrisburg, it would either have to be like this week, or in mid-summer. Considering the deadlines involved for this, we need to get cranking. Thus, the summit I would love to see happen will probably either have to happen remotely, or perhaps without my involvement. :(

Anything Else?

Are there any other issues you would suggest to be critical beta-blockers? Do you have any thoughts to add to the issues I've suggested? Please add to this thread!

Thanks,
Aaron Winborn

(Cross-posted at g.d.o.)