IPTC data revisited

[Sivakatirswami]

I asked this once a couple of years ago, I will ask again:

has anyone tackled reading and writing IPTC data to and from a JPEG?

I've developed several applications that now use a

some*file.jpg
some*file.txt

Model for captions to files. it's actually a very simple and
powerful model... if you have these two comprising the "data layer"
you can put them into any presentation layer you want.
They travel well. some*file.txt can be opened edited and read
by any text editor on any machine on any OS etc... CGI's can
read that file and do *whatever*

The problem this solution does not meld well with
any existing applications other than my own tools.

There are many instances have a Rev tools that could
read and write IPTC metadata that would travel with the file
would be very useful. I could easily integrate the two
models where some*file.txt contained the IPTC data in a
raw ASCII delimited format (if that were possible) and
have the best of both worlds.

BTW: Micro$soft purchased our favorite photo management tool:

iView  -- now called "Microsoft Expression"  destined to
become MS's answer to Adobe's Bridge...

Pray that they do not End of Life this marvelous tool.

Like they did with Living Cells Sprite Animation program... which
was a bright innovation that died in the grip of MS.

The more we see all these machinations over market
share and strangling innovation via software hegemony
the more one leans toward open source...
if only on principle alone.

Sivakatirswami