On 1/6/2016 4:24 PM, Chuck Norcutt wrote:
Entirely open ended?
I believe so. You can put in anything. That doesn't mean those reading the EXIF
won't ignore it. :-)
There is no standards group which at least makes recommendations for standard tag names and definitions?
I dunno, maybe? But what clout would they have, with no enforcement mechanism?
Sounds like anarchy.
Not really. There are a whole bunch of standard tag names and definitions. It's easy to find them on the web. I think it
started out with a set from some-body at the beginning. And pretty much everyone but the camera makers sticks to them,
for the simple reason that no apps will show/use them. Even the makers seem to have settled down after wild beginnings -
I think.
EXIF was/is a godsend to the makers, providing detailed diagnostic info right in the image, even if others don't know
what it all means. Didn't help with my E-M5 II, though. Oly hadn't added tags to show EFC and ESC to EXIF, or hadn't
told the techs here. I only found out myself, after an unsuccessful exchange with service, that the odd behavior I was
experiencing only occurred in Silent Mode.
When my late brother was designing portable computers*, he used to Joke "I believe in standards, everyone should have
one." as a comment on the state of the industry then. Perhaps this is a good example of how a wildly diverse group of
users can make an open ended system work. That it is informative only, not critical to making images and displaying
them, has to be a big help.
BTW, I was a huge fan of IBM's rigidly standardized interfaces in the mainframe
world.
Non Standard Moose
* Yes, he's mentioned in "Fire in the Valley".
--
What if the Hokey Pokey *IS* what it's all about?
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