Is hyperref really the best way to add metadata to a TeX file?

Question

So I know one of hyperref's features is that it can add metadata to you PDFs. This is a nice feature and if you're putting stuff online, it's good to include metadata.

But is the hyperref package really the best way to do it? I mean, if you're using hyperref anyway, that's fine. But if you don't want hyperrefs in your document, it seems weird to include the package, and then turn off pretty much all its functionality. And given that hyperref is a shorthand for "package conflict nightmare", is seems insane that you should have to deal with it just for the sake of some metadata.

So I have two questions.

1. Is there a good reason that hyperref includes this functionality which is apparently unrelated to its primary purpose?
2. Is there a better (smaller, less conflicty, easier...) option to include metadata in my PDFs?

Answer 1

You could use the \pdfinfo command of pdfTeX to add meta data. For example:

\pdfinfo{
  /Title (example.pdf)
  /Creator (TeX)
  /Producer (pdfTeX 1.40.0)
  /Author (Seamus)
  /Subject (Example)
  /Keywords (pdflatex, latex,pdftex,tex)}

There's no need to load a package for that purpose. This command is explained in the pdfTeX documentation.

Answer 2

There is xmpincl which allows you to add arbitrary metadata in the Adobe XMP (Extensible Metadata Platform) format. But you have to write a separate XML file to do this. I always thought there should be a LaTeX way to create an XMP file on the first pass and embed it in the PDF on the second pass. But so far I know of none.