"Spotlight Comments" not archived

[GoogleCodeExporter]

What steps will reproduce the problem?
1. Add "spotlight comments" to a file in The Finder
2. Xar that file into a new archive
3. Un-Xar it and "get info". No comments!

What is the expected output? What do you see instead?

I would hope that comments would be archived.

What version of the product are you using? On what operating system?

1.4 on MacOS X 10.4.8

Please provide any additional information below.

For what it's worth, I've found no command-line archiving programs that
maintain Finder comments.

Original issue reported on code.google.com by nik%inik...@gtempaccount.com on 12 Mar 2007 at 10:08

[GoogleCodeExporter]

The reason that no other utilities maintain Finder comments is, I think, the 
fact that there is not any 
documented API to modify them, as far as I know. It is simple enough to read 
them by looking at 
kMDItemFinderComment in the file metadata, but I have not found any way to 
write this programatically as of 
yet. There is a PBDTSetCommentAsync function in the Carbon File Manager API, 
but it seems to only affect the 
OS 9 comments stored in the Desktop database, which won't be visible in OS X.

Currently, the only way I know of to modify the Finder comments is to send an 
AppleScript to the Finder. 
However, this is really kludgey, and has a number of problems associated with 
it (for example, what if the 
Finder isn't running for some reason?).

I think the idea is that in OS X, Apple has decided that they want the comment 
field to be something 
exclusively owned by the user, and not for application developers to write to. 
That's the only explanation I can 
come up for this omission, at least.

Original comment by Charle...@gmail.com on 14 Mar 2007 at 12:11

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Well, one way is by copying the .DS_Store file, which xar seems to omit from 
archives by default. At the very 
least, it seems if you archive a whole folder, the .DS_Store should be 
maintained unless explicitly omitted by 
the operator.

Unfortunately, since The Finder maintains comments on copies, there's a 
disconnect between the Finder's 
behavior and darn near every command-line program's. It would be awful nice if 
xar could handle that and 
even open up Spotlight Comments to searching via the XML envelope. It would 
CERTAINLY make xar stand out 
from the pack.

I wonder if there's a way to parse the .DS_Store file?

Original comment by nik%inik...@gtempaccount.com on 15 Mar 2007 at 5:14

[GoogleCodeExporter]

The way that Finder comments are archived makes them unlikely to be archived by 
xar in the near future.  They 
are not specifically "part of the file", they are part of a separate database 
of files.  Although Finder presents it as 
an attribute of the file, it is no more a part of the file than information 
about it you have stored in an Excel file 
referencing it.

How are you trying to archive a .DS_Store that you are finding it omitted?  I 
find that odd that it is not being 
included.  If you are specifying something like xar -cvf foo.xar foo/*, the * 
is interpreted by the shell and will not 
match dot-files.  However, if you're doing something like xar-cvf foo.xar foo/ 
and it is still not being archived, 
I'd like to hear about that.

Original comment by bbraun on 17 Apr 2007 at 2:19

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Well, the fact they are not part of the file is sort of a historical issue. I'd 
hope that they moved over to being 
stored in an EA in a future release, but who knows if/when that will happen. It 
is possible to get/set the 
comments using AppleEvents.

Original comment by finlay.d...@gmail.com on 25 Apr 2007 at 12:36

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Closing.

Original comment by bbraun on 24 Jul 2007 at 1:23

• Changed title: "Spotlight Comments" not archived
• Changed state: WontFix