[Simon]

I want to be able to save Spotlight comments right away in the save dialog. Of course there could be a second line in the dialog box to add spotlight comments, but I'd prefer a more 'compact' solution. How about, leaving a space after the filename and then every word after this space is saved in the comment field, like 'file.txt this is the comment'.

I'm wondering if Apple might include similar functionality in the future or if maybe a smart developer could come up with a decent hack.

Anybody else here want something like that? Is there any available hack doing something like that?

[Catfish_Man]

how would the space idea work with multi-word file names?

[Simon]

Originally Posted by Catfish_Man

how would the space idea work with multi-word file names?

Well, the spaces in the file name would be before the period and suffix and thus could be recognized as belonging to the file name rather than to the spotlight comment. If there is no suffix, there could still be an ambiguity dialog.

I'm not saying it's an elegant method and it's certainly not something you'd call intuitive in front of a novice user, but as a dirty hack it would be very efficient.

[CaptainHaddock]

Personally, I think a separate field in the save box for Spotlight comments would be terrific.

Some of the onus belongs to the application developers, too. Most applications have some way of attaching comments, author name, and other data to their files. Those programs should be smart enough in Tiger to put that information where Spotlight can read it; and from there, users need to actually fill in that stuff.

[Simon]

Originally Posted by CaptainHaddock

Some of the onus belongs to the application developers, too. Most applications have some way of attaching comments, author name, and other data to their files. Those programs should be smart enough in Tiger to put that information where Spotlight can read it; and from there, users need to actually fill in that stuff.

You're absolutely right. Up to now I have hardly used these metadata interfaces because mostly they were closed to other applications (including the Finder!) and thus they limited functionality considerably. With Spotlight however, there is an open standard that lets the user access the information globally and doesn't limit it to the app's own interface. I guess it's time for developers to open this data to Spotlight, maybe even let Spotlight take over some of the handling, but also, I guess it's time for me to start using this kind of document metadata.