[Silva-general] container creators?

[eric casteleijn]

Andy Altepeter wrote:
> Hi Generals,
> 
> I find it frustrating that in the contents screen of a container I cannot 
> identify who created the sub-containers.  Well, being that the contents 
> screen only list author info, this is expected.  Except there is no author 
> info for containers!  One can determine the creator of a container by going 
> to the properties tab of that container, but that's an extra step.
> 
> Why is there no author or last modified date?  It's probably for historical 
> reasons, but folders can be modified, and those modifications happen by an 
> author.  The difficult question is probably "what constitutes a modification 
> to a folder"?  I think the answer to this is: "the properties of a folder", 
> like the silva-extra and silva-content metadata sets.  Modifications should 
> be considered as either changing the content of an object (in the case of 
> content and assets) or it's properties (content, assets, containers). 
> Modifying metadata on content and assets causes the author info to be 
> updated, so why not for containers?
> 
> Initially, we know who the author is: the person who created the folder.  The 
> person who creates the folder specifies a title, or has the option to, so 
> really they should be the "first" author of the folder.  One could also think 
> of this person as the "creator" of the folder.
> 
> I would like to propose that a change be made to Silva.  There are two 
> possibilities here:
> 
> 1) (simpler): On the contents tab of a container, display the creationdate and 
> the creator of the sub-containers in the 'modified' and 'author' columns.  Do 
> not change how container author
> s are identified (i.e. setting author info when saving a container's 
> metadata).
> 2) (more involved): When a container is created, set the last mod date and 
> author to the creation time and creator (resp.).  When a container's metadata 
> is updated, update the author and modification time.  Change the contents 
> screen to display the author and mod time.

I think I agree with all you've said here, Andy. Since I'm probably 
going to go through the internals of the Metadata System this Thursday, 
I'll try and see if I can take this along.

-- 
- eric casteleijn
http://infrae.com