Windows 7 supports IPTC in JPEG Picture Files! (Not quite – Adobe XMP actually)

Posted on February 28, 2009 by Julian Knight Updated on August 20, 2009

Wow! I’ve just discovered by accident that Windows 7 beta supports a few ~~IPTC~~ XMP attributes in picture files. At last, Microsoft supporting standards!

Above is a screen shot from the properties of a test picture. The Description and Origin sections seem to be standard IPTC fields and I checked them out using iTag.

In iTag the Title attribute comes out as both the Title and the Description. The Subject field doesn’t seem to be recognised nor does the comments field. Rating, Tags, Authors and Copyright are all recognised by iTag.

I’ll do some more extensive testing when I get time.

Update: I spoke too soon In fact, it’s rather more complex.

Using ExifTool with ExiftoolGUI, I can see that actually, Windows 7 sets BOTH some EXIF attributes and some XMP (the Adobe meta data format) attributes but NOT IPTC attributes. As it happens, iTag also understands these. Here is a table of what seems to get set.

Windows 7 Attribute	EXIF Attributes	XMP Attributes	iTag Name (Note that iTag synchronises EXIF and XMP attributes on updates [may not be a good thing], Win7 overwrites!!!)
Title	XPTitle, UserComment, ImageDescription	Title, Description (Note that only the Title will show the title in Windows 7)	Title, Description (updates EXIF ImageDescription & XMP Description, multi-lines joined with “…”)
Subject	XPSubject	N/A	N/A
Rating (Number, 1-5)	Rating (1-5), RatingPercent (as per XMP)	Rating (1-5), RatingPercent (1=1, 2=13) (Note that Rating alone DOES show the rating stars in Windows 7)	Stars under the thumbnail
Tags (“:” separated)	XPKeywords (“:” separated)	LastKeywordXMP (separated by “, “) (Note that this alone DOES show in Windows 7)	Tag Bucket
Comments (Multi-line – ctrl-enter)	XPComments (Lines separated with “…”)	N/A	N/A
Authors	Artist, XPAuthor	Creator (Note that this alone DOES show in Windows 7)	Author
Copyright	Copyright	Rights	Copyright

The “XP…” EXIF attributes seem to be Windows specific as ExifToolGUI doesn’t offer an edit feature for them, just lists them.

So, a rather typically Microsoft mixed bag. Why wasn’t the XMP Description attribute mapped to Windows Comments? Similarly for EXIF UserComment!

Still, it is something anyway and hopefully the table will help you choose which attributes to use for the best cross-tool support.

I will try to add some more applications to the table if I get a change, if you get there before me, please let me know and I will add the details here.

Update 2: A quick look at Wikipedia shows that Microsoft seem to be backing XMP as support is built in to a number of their photo tools. In the past I’ve stayed away from this as only Adobe and other expensive products supported it whereas IPTC had more widespread support. It seems that this may be changing now – typical – time perhaps to find a way to copy all those IPTC attributes in my photos across to XMP.

See my note about what happens with Windows 7 and iTag updates. This is BAD. Windows 7 rides roughshod over several attributes. Even worse, iTag was unable to reopen the file after Windows 7 had updated it.

So do not use Windows 7 to update image attributes if you also want to use other, more professional tools.

Technorati : EXIF, IPTC, Win7, XMP
Del.icio.us : EXIF, IPTC, Win7, XMP
Diigo Tag Search : EXIF, IPTC, Win7, XMP

Easier posting to Blogger Blogs (Zoundry Raven)

Posted on February 27, 2009 by Julian Knight Updated on August 20, 2009

Just a quick note to recommend some software that makes writing blog entries very much easier.

The software is called Zoundry Raven and I’m using the latest beta (under Windows 7 beta).

The editor is WYSIWYG and has a much more sensible set of standards than the built-in Blogger editor (including the beta version). It also allows you to publish the same entry to multiple blogs if needed. It has image, link and tag handling too and it makes blogging rather more pleasurable.

Update 2009-02-28
: A couple of things I wanted to add to this. Firstly, Raven isn’t actually in beta! Secondly, that the more I use it, the more I like it! It is very extensible too, I’ve just added a tag search for Diigo, the online bookmarking service that is miles better than del.icio.us and it only took 2 minutes. I have also found that I rarely need to manually adjust the html, quite a change from the native Blogger interface. Finally, adding images is a breeze; you can copy and paste and as long as you have some storage defined (I’m just using a free Google Picassa account at the moment) and Raven will automatically upload the image and sort out the links – magic! Well done Zoundry.

One final thing. Raven doesn’t have all that good a support for proxy servers at the moment. So if you are behind a Microsoft ISA Server proxy (very common in large organisations), you might need to use something like CNTLM. I’ll blog about that another time I think.

Technorati : Software, Windows

Del.icio.us : Software, Windows

Diigo Tag Search : Software, Windows

Windows 7 Beta – Now my main OS

Posted on February 27, 2009 by Julian Knight Updated on August 20, 2009

I’m now using Windows 7 Beta (Build 7000) as my day-to-day operating system.

It is generally very well behaved I have to say and appears to be what Vista should have been from the start. Vista reminds me a lot of Windows/ME, anyone remember that? Another failed Windows build. In reality, Vista was the Windows 7 beta.

Of course, there are a few rough edges and I’ll do a post about them shortly.

The PC is a Dell M1710, 17″ screen and 4GB RAM with WiFi and an NVidia 7900 series mobile graphics card.

proxy.pac files, Mozilla (Firefox & Thunderbird) and Vista or Windows 7

Posted on February 27, 2009 by Julian Knight Updated on August 20, 2009

I’ve found a problem with Mozilla based products and proxy settings.

To automatically configure a proxy for use by Internet browsers, you can use a file called “proxy.pac“. This is a JavaScript function that is loaded into the browser when it starts and redirects requests via a proxy where required.

All of the descriptions for this file you will find on the Internet will provide the following example of checking your current IP address. This is used for laptops where the IP address will change depending on where you are. You can check when the laptop is on the corporate network and redirect requests via the corporate proxy as needed:

if ( isInNet(myIpAddress(), "10.10.10.0", "255.255.255.0") ) {
  alert("Corporate address &amp; proxy");
  return "PROXY 10.10.10.240";
 }

Well, this does not work for Mozilla based applications (for example Firefox and Thunderbird) if you are using Microsoft Vista or Windows 7.

That is because, under those operating systems, the internal function myIpAddress() does not return an IPv4 address as expected (e.g. 10.10.10.5) but an IPv6 address instead (e.g something longer with lots of “:”).

In order to make your proxy.pac file work with both IE and Mozilla, use something like:

if (isInNet(myIpAddress(), "10.97.100.0", "255.255.255.0") ||
            shExpMatch(myIpAddress(), "fe80::b892:6a74:9635:*") ) {
  alert("Corporate address &amp; proxy");
  return "PROXY 10.61.9.200:8080; DIRECT;";
 }

You can discover your IPv6 address in several ways but the trusty command line “ipconfig /all” shows you everything you need.

See also this discussion on the Mozilla support forums: proxy.pac myIpAddress() returns incorrect format?

Del.icio.us : Configuration, Software, Vista, Win7
Technorati : Configuration, Software, Vista, Win7
Diigo Tag Search : Configuration, Software, Vista, Win7

What goes here?

Posted on February 11, 2009 by Julian Knight Updated on June 28, 2011

I’ve already got a few things to blog about so expect some articles shortly covering the following:

Tablet PC’s
I’ve just brought an IBM X61 (on eBay) after much deliberation (we’re talking several years here!). I’ve wanted a Slate (e.g. no keyboard) for ages but they go for silly prices generally. So now I have an X61 to go with the monster 17″ Dell M1710.
Microsoft InfoPath
An XML-based form designer and filler with rich interface options (including Tablet ink support).
Microsoft Groove
A peer-to-peer collaboration tool a bit like a mini SharePoint for workgroups without needing a central server.

Update 2009-02-13: Not forgetting:

Microsoft OneNote
The ultra-useful note-taking tool.
Microsoft Windows 7
Doubtless what Windows Vista should have been in the first place!

VirtualBox Host Interface Networking Update

Posted on February 11, 2009 by Julian Knight Updated on August 21, 2009

Great news!

The latest versions of VirtualBox have sorted out the issues of host networking.
So all of the messing around that you used to have to do, especially under Linux, is now over.

So ignore the previous post, it is no longer required.

Update

Posted on February 11, 2009 by Julian Knight Updated on August 21, 2009

Hi, thought I’d better put an update on here as to why I haven’t done any posts here recently.

Well, I’ve not done much with Linux recently. My OpenSUSE 11.0 desktop machine works and does pretty much everything I ask of it. At the moment, that is largely managing my photographs and not much else. This is because I’m out and about on a big project and so I’m using my monster laptop (Dell M1710) and that is running Vista as I have to be able to run Outlook, OneNote and other MS Office applications at full speed.

So, check out my general IT Blog: “Much Ado About IT”.

Welcome

Posted on February 11, 2009 by Julian Knight Updated on June 28, 2011

Hi, here is my new blog. I’ve been meaning to set up a general IT blog for some time and this is it.
This will be a collection of thoughts, ideas I’ve had and research I’ve done.
You can also look at my blog about Linux and my personal homepage.