Your exact words were "I don't believe that Nik's U-point technology works on RAW data in the Nikon Capture NX implementation either". Maybe it's not me that has a problem understanding. Maybe it's you who has a problem articulating :-)
Why be such an A$$ about this 
Jeez, my two year old nephew has better manners. Would it kill you to just say "Hey, maybe we misunderstood each other. What I meant was ......" Instead you go nuclear right from the get go.
If you think I misunderstood you, fine. Point out where (politely) and we'll go from there, but why make such arrogant, rude, useless and, frankly, brainless, comments. If this is the way you're going to act, maybe you'd be better served by DPReview.
For the record, you questioned whether U-point worked on RAWs. I said they do (which is correct). I meant nothing by it. You clearly feel slighted in some way. Why is beyond me.
Well, because the U-point adjustments can be made without exporting a TIFF or JPEG or converting the RAW in any way. The adjustment is added to the NEF file as a tag. The tag only gets applied when the NEF is finally converted, which could be some time well after the adjustment was made. The NEF file doesn't get any larger, other than the addition of the tag, so it clearly can't be applying the adjustment to an RGB conversion. In the case of Aperture, the U-point adjustment may very well be applied to an RGB conversion of the NEF, since that seems to be Apple's rule for handling their new plug-in adjustments. But that's not the case with NX.
The above is offered simply as an answer to your above questions. No snub or malice is intended in any of my comments (other than when I suggested you were being an A$$, of course :-)
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Well I might be an arrogant, rude, useless and, frankly, brainless ass, but that does not mean you have understood anything about what I was talking about. You exhibit the comprehension, debating and argument skills of your nephew I'm afraid.
What set me off was the fact that I had spent considerable time and effort trying to make an argument to a previous poster why 'working on NEF' does not mean all operations are performed in raw and then you came, obviously without having read my second post, and made exactly the same argument with the previous poster as a response to my initial one.
Let's see what you did:
-- I made a statement, say: A may not be true
-- Previous posters argued that I'm wrong and A is true because B is true
-- I spent considerable effort trying to argue that B being true does not prove that A is true.
-- You then you came along and instead of arguing why my argument is incorrect you argue: A is true because B is true....
Who's the 2 year old then?
I'm just going to address one of your points at the risk of repeating myself, as it is obvious to me you confuse the file format (NEF) with the data space (raw or RGB) and the type of editing (metadata nondestructive or immediate destructive) with raw vs RGB:
'Well, because the U-point adjustments can be made without exporting a TIFF or JPEG or converting the RAW in any way. The adjustment is added to the NEF file as a tag. The tag only gets applied when the NEF is finally converted, which could be some time well after the adjustment was made. The NEF file doesn't get any larger, other than the addition of the tag, so it clearly can't be applying the adjustment to an RGB conversion. In the case of Aperture, the U-point adjustment may very well be applied to an RGB conversion of the NEF, since that seems to be Apple's rule for handling their new plug-in adjustments. But that's not the case with NX.'1. Nothing stops NX or another metadata editor (tag editor as you like to say) from reading raw data, operate on the raw, convert the raw data to RGB space internally and perform more operations on it. Then save all this actions in the tags in the NEF file. When asked to produce an RGB FILE then it just performs these operations in sequence and outputs the RGB data in the file. There's nothing in this process that dictates when in the sequence the raw-RGB conversion takes place. It does NOT have to be the last thing it is done before saving to TIFF.
2. NEF format can store RGB data also. Open a jpeg file in NX. Save it selecting NEF. Open the NEF. What does the NEF file contain? Not raw data of course. Perform U-point on it. Where does U-point operate on (at least in this case)? Not on raw data of course as these do not exist. Is it possible that NX contains two separate U-point routines one to operate on raw when raw data is read and before conversion and one to operate on RGB data? Yes it is but somehow I doubt it.
Why do I doubt it? Not only because it would not make much sense from a code-economy point of view, but also because I suspect that the type of colour operations U-point supports REQUIRES that the data have been first converted to RGB (gamma corrected or not).
3. Metadata type of editing (tags) are just the way these editors work. They describe the operations to be performed in tags in the file and then apply the operations either for rendering or for saving to an RGB file. This can be done for both raw and RGB data. Do not confuse these things. Adobe could choose (I doubt they will) to rewrite PS tomorrow to become a metadata (tag) editor. Would that make PS (I'm not referring to ACR) a program that would operate on raw data?
So to summarise just for your sake (I hope it is that last time):
a. The fact that a program is a raw converter does not necessarily imply that all supported functions are performed on raw data (i.e. pre conversion). Which ones do and which ones don't? Just the developers now precisely. There are some that make no sense in terms of the raw data and others that could be performed on both. Some operations (prime example is noise processing, others are HDR, stacking etc ) have a distinct advantage in being performed on the raw data, others I'm not so sure about.
b.
The fact that an editor is a non-destructive metadata editor does not necessarily imply that the program is a raw converter or handles raw data. Historically meta-data editing was implemented first in raw converters which might explain the confusion.
c.
The fact that data are stored in Nikon NEF file does not necessarily imply that the data is raw. d. Functionality like U-point (or dodge and burn) being integrated in a raw converter rather than externally will only offer workflow advantages if in both cases the data it operates on have been converted to RGB before. On the other hand, functionality like NR will offer distinct IQ advantages if implemented built in
AND operates before the raw conversion (or alternatively is offered as a 'raw aware' plug-in to be called before raw conversion).
I am not going to repeat the rest of what I have already written here, if you're interested go back and read my posts with a cool head. It is obvious to me you haven't, either the first time you posted or the second.
I believe I was very precise and consistent in what I wrote, even though I don't write in my native tongue so syntactical and grammatical errors are inevitable. You choose to be hard headed about it; that's fine with me. Please move on.
PS. Thank you for the recommendation of dpreview. I don't post there and I choose to post here (amongst a few other selected forums) because I am under the impression that here people tend to read one's posts before replying and most of them refrain from name calling prefering constructive dialogue (which presupposes one responding to the other's arguments rather than throwing words around).
