[Techtalk] Software recommendation: photo database

[Mary]

Hey everyone,

I'm looking for a data format and software recommendation.

My family has become interested in family history and wants to catalog
electronic copies of their photos, and I'm looking for software that
will help them do this. Anyone got any recommendations?

Essential requirements:

    1. Data format is open and readily easy to understand (a sane XML
    DTD would be good, CSV OK -- basically as long as the data format
    would be fairly easy to interpret without the original software
    that's OK).

    It needs to be able to store the filename of the image (and maybe
    pointers to thumbnails?), names of the people in the photo, the
    location of the photo, the name of the photographer, and the date of
    the photo.

    If there is a standard archival data format that's not incredibly
    complex, I'd like to use that.

Highly desirable attributes

    1. Data format can be manipulated by a free (ideally free as in
    libré, free as in beer OK) MS Windows GUI.

    2. Data format can be queried by a free MS Windows GUI (eg, show me
    all photos featuring Peter Smith in 1960)

Desirable attributes:

    1. Data format can be manipulated and queried by free GUIs for other
    platforms (X, MacOS etc)

I'm willing to write GUIs if I have to, but I'd really rather not have
to. However I'd prefer a really good (and standardised) data format with
no free GUIs to a bad or closed one with GUIs.

I don't need an HTML export, if the data format is sane I will write it
myself.

While I'm asking, has anyone used any good open data format geneological
tools? Are there any standard data formats?

-Mary