Dear John,
I have often mentioned in my posts, and will do so here again, that not every application may be for everyone. By no means do I try to make Aperture to something that it is not. For instance, I will be the first one to point out its sheer memory, CPU and GPU requirements before it can be even remotely useful.
My original post in this thread was directed at the 2nd post in this thread, by Robert Edwards, who states that there isn't an easy way to get the metadata out of the database. This, and solely this, is what I meant to address: METADATA out of the DATABASE. To me, and I would say to many people, the word DATABASE has something mystical, closed, propriatery, even scary on it. Something that you can't approach; that you can't just open up and see what's in it. Something that you need a specialized tool to read it. Something that will be totally useless if your application of choice were to go away, for whatever reason. Now, indeed, Aperture has such a DATABASE - one per library. In addition, however, it has one side file for every master image, and this file is in a publicly readable format - the OS (without Aperture) even ships with an app that can show you the contents. Not much difficulty about that.
It was about getting the metadata out of the database. Nothing more, nothing less. It is trivial.
Now, it indeed may be the case that this may not be of much value to the user. I would wager to say that it is about of the same value to the user as Photoshop's idecar files, assuming the same scenario that suddenly Adobe would go out of business or stop supporting PS. About as likely as with Aperture, but that's just my opinion.
As for not modifying the original files: I was hoping that I made it clear that it was a design decision, one that was very clearly broadcast, and that is considered to be a feature. As such, it should not be a suprise, and if this is a hurdle for entry, then by all means, do not enter. However, like with all absolute statements, there's little point in arguing it. Like with a religion, join it or ignore it or fight it.
For the record, the general case of writing out metadata without destroying other metadata is impossible to solve without intimate knowledge of what the manufacturer puts there. Again, I am saying the GENERAL case, not one special case that may be easy. But once again, because data integrity was the prime directive with the design of Aperture, since the GENERAL case can't be guaranteed to be loss-free, writing of metadata into original files was not included.
I hope this time I was clear about the scope of what I meant to say, and it is free to everyone to judge if they like it or not, and to use it or not. I am merely trying to explain the reasons.
