Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 5.3.
Implicit tag management UI from Firefox.
5.3.2 Sharing Tags
There are many ways to share tags, but here we consider only sharing tags by using
a version control system (VCS). Implementing tag sharing through a VCS can be
especially easy if the editor already supports interactions with the VCS.
There are four essential operations regarding tags as outlined below:
Create a tag.
Add assets to a tag.
Remove assets from a tag.
Delete a tag.
Tag creation/removal.
For shared tags, in addition to the normal task of creat-
ing/deleting a tag file, like Listing 5.3, the system should do the corresponding job
of updating the VCS repository. For most VCS repositories, this will be a two-step
process of marking the file as added/removed and then actually committing that
marked change to the repository.
Adding/removing assets.
When updating a shared tag, the system will first get
the latest version from the VCS and reload the tag file if changed (also lock it if
necessary) before doing the actual update. After the update, the change will again
be submitted to the repository. This sequence of tasks must be performed by user
request through the UI for shared tags.
5.4 Other Considerations
Up to this point, we have discussed some considerations when implementing an
asset metadata/tag persistence system. There are some other things which may be
worthy of further consideration for a better result.
