Re: [Libexif-devel] Re: libmnote and libexif merged

[Roberto C. <rob...@en...>]

Lutz Müller wrote:
> 
> On Thu, 2003-10-30 at 22:14, Roberto Costa wrote:
> > I haven't had yet enough time to look at it closely as I would like to,
> > in the meantime a couple of questions naturally come into my mind:
> > What happens to a picture with a maker note not recognized by libexif?
> 
> libexif keeps the data in the MakerNote. If any data is stored somewhere
> else, it will be lost.

I'm not convinced that is an acceptable behaviour the fact that a
libexif user that processes his/her images with the library may lose
information because of lack of knowledge about his/her camera maker
notes.
My idea is that libexif should always be conservative and do its best
not to corrupt any user exif info. When it's not the case, I think at
least the user should be clearly warned of the risks derived from using
libexif.
 
> By the way, if you save MakerNotes that are recognized by libexif, all
> data is now stored in the MakerNote tag (as it should have been from the
> very beginning).

I agree that it is a big mistake, nevertheless exif specs don't say that
MakerNote tag must be self-contained and that it can't refer to data
allocated outside its boundaries.
I think it's a bug in the specs we should deal with.

Cheers,
Roberto