Reading Exif comment data for coppermine caption

[zeezee]

I am currently running 1.3.5. Yes, I understand I should upgrade to 1.4.9 right away however I have installed a hack/mod for 1.3.x versions that allows the photos to be sorted by "date taken", not "date uploaded", http://forum.coppermine-gallery.net/index.php?topic=9360.0
Its critical to me that they are sorted as such, so I have yet to upgrade since that feature is not avaiable (to the best of my knowledge/searching) natively or via hack/mod.

I came across a plugin for 1.4.x that allows coppermine to use the Exif comments as the captions, http://forum.coppermine-gallery.net/index.php?topic=29229.0
and as Im about to upload about 5000 pictures all with exif comments already added it would be super if I didnt have to add them again as captions. Now I fully realize the plugin system wont work with 1.3.x and Im not asking for someone to port the hack for me, I was looking through the 2 files available in the plugin and there doesnt seem to be a whole lot of code there, but I dont know anything about how this plugin system works and wether I could try and use any of that code to make a mod for 1.3.x. Im not great at making original code but scriptkiddie I can do usually, just wondering if someone could tell me the possibilites of this? Am I way out in left field? If not, pointing me in the right direction would be greatly appreciated. If not, thanks for your time.