The Safari API is a service to query Safari.OReilly.com. A problem is that it is free but you need to register in order to use the service. I believe Amazon has similar services to provide metadata on items they sell. The kind of info you get is described here:
http://access.safari.oreilly.com/affiliates/?p=response.
Book Title, ISBN, Edition, Author Group, Number of Pages, Publication Date, Subject Set, Publisher, Description, Retail Price, Safari Slots, Small Cover Image, Medium Cover Image, Large Cover Image, Purchase URL, Sections, Table of Contents.
Let’s say I have 500 PDFs inside a directory. I could tell EagleFiler to look up the titles at safari and autotag using the subjects in the subject set returned. Then I could build a structure of smart folders like the one safari.oreilly.com uses, and my PDFs will automatically appear without me having to manually drag or tag.
Another use would be to create data structures you can associate to a file, then provide a custom viewer for that structure. eg: dvd, book. You could then autoarrange a movie collection of avi files. Or go the other way around and let the user use the API to insert books without an associated file, so they can build a catalogue of real life items they have at home.
Im just thinking aloud here. More than a feature request I just wanted to mention it, sometimes it’s useful to have ideas floating around on your head.
And the following is is unrelated to this thread. I read the following on a web of one of your competitors in case you are vaguely interested:
http://ironicsoftware.com/community/comments.php?DiscussionID=545
Writing to Spotlight Comments programmatically is not trivial - there are hoops to jump through that make it more trouble than people would suspect. Supporting it has caused a great deal of grief and, IMO, has lead to instabilities that frankly make us look bad.
Our new OpenMeta system is far more reliable and the possibilities opened up by this are very exciting.
We are not claiming to have created a standard - we are offering the framework for one. This is why it will be Open Source. We are also talking to other developers so we can get a consensus and move forward.