On Sep 14, 2015, at 1:02 PM, Tim Streater <tim at clothears.org.uk> wrote: > > On 14 Sep 2015 at 19:29, Warren Young <wyml at etr-usa.com> wrote: > >> We haven?t had to worry about compatibility with >> 3-character file extensions since Windows NT 3.5 and Windows 95, two decades >> ago now. > > Of course in a sensible world, OS providers would all have implemented a > common metadata API, and no one would need or use extensions.
There have been many such APIs and file formats. HFS (creator+type code), IPTC/EXIF/XMP/Dublin Core, EDI (balkanized into EDIFACT, X12, ODETTE?), MARC records (similarly balkanized), etc. They?re all ?standards? in the XKCD sense: https://xkcd.com/927/
