[GRASS-user] OT: metadata authoring tools

[Patton, Eric]

Dylan:
>Sorry for the off-topic post. I am part of an "ISO Metadata Editor Review" 
>committee over here, and was looking for some initial feedback on what 
>various parties in the FOSS world use for metadata authoring, etc. There are 
>some members of the group who are looking to building an extension to the 
>BibTeX standard as a way of keeping the entire process in a text format, 
>and "integrateable"  into standard document preparation techniques.

Metadata is a very big deal in our shop; there's been a big push in the last 
3-4 years to get all of our legacy data online and documented. Pretty 
much every bathymetry raster dataset we collect is destined for an ArcIMS 
public web portal, and so has to have FGDC-compliant metadata accompanying it. 

We use ArcGIS' ArcCatalog to write our metadata. I've been casting about for 
a FOSS metadata authoring tool, with not much luck. The USGS has
a couple tools called xtme/tkme which are used for metadata authoring. I tried 
installing them once, but never really had a lot of success with it. 

I'd be really interested in some kind of metadata scripting tool that uses 
LaTeX/BibTeX. Are they intending to write a new document class to integrate into LaTeX?

Metadata authoring is pretty much the only reason I need to use ArcGIS right now. 
If a free, open source alternative became available that was usable in a GRASS scripting
environment, that would be great! 

Dylan:
>Any thoughts, suggestions, or stories would be appreciated. We are hoping to 
>make a big impact on the formation of several federal (US) metadata authoring 
>policies- with emphasis on open source software.

Good luck, and please keep the list updated on events. I'm definitely interested.

Cheers,

~ Eric.