Motility (Pun Intended)

EXIF.org - EXIF Location Proposal

EXIF.org - EXIF and related resources

"The EXIF 2.1 standard contains a GPS IFD allowing the position at which an image was taken to be detailed amongst the usual EXIF data. Information about image location could provide a very useful form of annotation, both for the primary user wishing to search within their own image collection, and for when distributing such images amongst secondary users over the internet, for example.

However, the current GPS IFD is somewhat limiting for obvious reasons - it requires a source of GPS information - most likely a handheld GPS unit. Currently, very few digital camera users own a GPS unit, and fewer still have a camera with some means of connecting the GPS unit to it (as an aside, there are programs available to attach GPS info offline). Additionally, GPS info is not immediately human readable, and, for example, the seemingly simple task of deriving a country from a GPS coordinate is far from trivial.

This proposal concerns a possible method for addressing this issue - an additional IFD containing user-definable location information with an emphasis on human readability. Initially this information would be added offline - a simple program on either a PC or handheld computer could be used to annotate images, possibly en masse. Ideally however, the digital camera itself could set this information on some level. For example, a country name could be selected from a standard list stored in the camera's ROM, and a city/area name could be taken from a user-defined list uploaded previously by the user. "

posted by Anwar @ 5:03 PM