Apple Numbers - is this a bug?

[Hubert]

Hi,

More out of idle curiosity than any pressing need, I ran ExifTool over an Apple Numbers file.

ExifTool Version Number         : 11.21
File Name                       : Fake addresses.numbers
Directory                       : /Users/redacted/Documents/redacted
File Size                       : 631 kB
File Modification Date/Time     : 2017:12:03 12:57:46+00:00
File Access Date/Time           : 2019:01:22 22:02:07+00:00
File Inode Change Date/Time     : 2019:01:06 09:13:23+00:00
File Permissions                : rw-------
File Type                       : PAGES
File Type Extension             : pages
MIME Type                       : application/x-iwork-pages-sffpages
Zip Required Version            : 20
Zip Bit Flag                    : 0
Zip Compression                 : None
Zip Modify Date                 : 2017:04:10 23:42:14
Zip CRC                         : 0x88164573
Zip Compressed Size             : 219987
Zip Uncompressed Size           : 219987
Zip File Name                   : Data/tile_paper_ltgray-7.jpg
Preview Image                   : (Binary data 119972 bytes, use -b option to extract)
Thumbnail Image                 : (Binary data 1376 bytes, use -b option to extract)
Other Image                     : (Binary data 13492 bytes, use -b option to extract)

The file type, file type extension and MIME type all refer to Apple Pages rather than to Apple Numbers.

Pages documents seem to return the correct information, as do Keynote presentations.

(I don't know how much it really matters - I can't imagine a real-world use for extracting metadata from a Numbers document. But who knows?)

Cheers,

H

[Phil Harvey]

Hi Hubert,

Could you send me the document and I'll take a look?  (philharvey66 at gmail.com)

- Phil

[Hubert]

Just sent it Phil, thanks.

H

[Phil Harvey]

I got it, thanks.

iWork files are a real pain because Apple changes the format frequently.  In this case, maybe identifying by the file extension is the way to go.  I will patch ExifTool to do this here.

- Phil

[Hubert]

Thanks Phil,

I said in my email that I thought this might be a one-off, but I've since looked further and found several other Numbers documents that are incorrectly reported as "Pages". A common factor seems to be that they contain a single table, rather than multiple tables or charts.

As you say, identifying by file extension may be a more foolproof method.

Best,

H

[Phil Harvey]

Identifying by extension definitely isn't foolproof, but it is a reasonable fallback in case I can't identify by content.

- Phil