Some findings about Windows XP tags

[Archive]

[Originally posted by laurentcaprani on 2005-08-15 01:53:35-07]

 I made some discoveries about those Windows XP tags (named XP____ in exiftool) and the way Windows Explorer uses them.

They seem to all compete with standard exif tags.

The EXIF Tags page already mentions that XPAuthor is ignored by Windows Explorer if Artist exists.The same is true for other Windows tags. For instance, XPAuthor is not displayed if ImageDescription exists.

The worst thing about this is that the corresponding exif tag is removed if you edit the values on the Windows Explorer's Summary tab.

-- Laurent CAPRANI
   Montreal

[Archive]

[Originally posted by exiftool on 2005-08-26 19:57:04-07]

Thanks for the note.  Yes, windows explorer does do questionable things to the meta information.  I think you mean that XPTitle is not displayed if ImageDescription exists.  I have added a note to this effect in the documentation.

[Archive]

[Originally posted by linuxuser on 2005-08-26 20:41:14-07]

I use linux and I am not very much experienced with XP. Can you tell me, how I can see these XP_-tags with the OS? A right click on the file doesn't show me this info.

[Archive]

[Originally posted by laurentcaprani on 2005-08-29 00:09:24-07]

> I think you mean that XPTitle is not displayed if ImageDescription exists. I have added a note to this effect in the documentation.

Ooops!

Yes I meant XPTitle. Thank you for correcting me.

[Archive]

[Originally posted by laurentcaprani on 2005-08-29 01:21:28-07]

> I use linux and I am not very much experienced with XP. Can you tell me, how I can see these XP_-tags with the OS?

> A right click on the file doesn't show me this info.

Those tags should show up as ordinary file "extended properties" : Right-click -> "Properties" Menu Item -> "Summary" Tab.

Remember that you won't see any XPTitle if your image also has an ImageDescription.

About Windows "extended properties"

Depending on the file format, those "properties" (Title, Subject, Comments, etc.) are stored as "OLE property sets" (e.g. for Office documents), as format-dependant metadata (for known formats like JPEG) or within a supplemental NTFS Stream that is not really part of the file.

I think that many people tend to use them as they are a convenient way to add consistent metadata to many kind of files, but managing them by program is less than simple. See : Odd behavior with Extended File Properties.

For Windows XP (> SP1), Microsoft provides a Windows Image Acquisition Automation Library. This library can be used within scripts like JavaScript and most probably from Perl. I tinkered with this a bit. It does simple things like tag extraction and writing.