ExifTool Forum

ExifTool => Bug Reports / Feature Requests => Topic started by: kiboost on October 05, 2017, 04:32:33 AM

Title: Why limiting IPTC.Category
Post by: kiboost on October 05, 2017, 04:32:33 AM
Hi,

When setting IPTC Category tag with exiftool, the string is limited to three characters.

Every other softwares I know allow reading and writing at least 18 characters (a string I actually use)

Would it be possible to up this limit in future updates ?
Title: Re: Why limiting IPTC.Category
Post by: StarGeek on October 05, 2017, 06:16:49 AM
Because according to the the IPTC IIM Specifications (http://www.iptc.org/std/IIM/4.1/specification/IIMV4.1.pdf) (see page 31), it is supposed to be limited to three characters.  You can work around this by using the -m option, which will allow exiftool to ignore the specification.

There is also the XMP:Category tag, which isn't limited to only three characters.  You might want to check to see which tags your software is writing to.

If I recall, the original use of this tag was in news agencies and limited to some very specific codes.  Though I can't seem to find any actual links on this at the moment.

Title: Re: Why limiting IPTC.Category
Post by: kiboost on October 05, 2017, 09:27:23 AM
Thanks, -m works fine !!
Title: Re: Why limiting IPTC.Category
Post by: Phil Harvey on October 05, 2017, 11:51:23 AM
Just FYI, this feature is explained in the 3rd paragraph on the ExifTool IPTC Tags documentation (https://exiftool.org/TagNames/IPTC.html) page.

- Phil