[silva-dev] Silva export and metadata

[eric casteleijn]

kit BLAKE wrote:
> 2006/8/16, eric casteleijn <eric at infrae.com>:
>> Luthiger Stoll Benno wrote:
>> > Dear developers
>> >
>> > One behaviour we stumbled over recently is that in a Silva export 
>> the actual value of metadata is sticked to the documents (and objects) 
>> exported. This leads to unexpected results with acquired metadata 
>> values when the objects are imported in a different context. Let's 
>> imagine a layout whose colours are defined by a metadata value. Now if 
>> we export a document from an environment characterized by a blue 
>> colour and imported in a red environment, most probably we expect the 
>> imported document to be displayed in a red environment too. However, 
>> as the formerly acquired metadata value for the colour (blue) now is 
>> sticked to the document, the document's new display colour is still blue.
>> >
>> > How do you handle this behaviour? Is this a feature or a bug?
>>
>> I don't think it's a bug per se, because if we export a subtree which
>> has only acquired metadata, and import it somewhere else, it may be that
>> we want to keep the original metadata, instead of changing it to that of
>> the new context. Having said that, I can definitely see the use case
>> where you would want to do just exactly that. Maybe the export should
>> have an option 'export acquired metadata', or something similar.
> 
> Maybe the import should have an option: restore acquired metadata

> Then you're covered. All the items in the export have the 'correct'
> metdata. If you're importing a subtree, you probably want the metadata
> acquisition to be restored too.

But how would the import know whether the metadata in the xml was 
originally acquired or set manually? I still think an option to just 
leave the acquired fields empty on export would be easiest to implement.

eric