Index Page Properties in Lucene

Currently (as I understand) page properties are simply stored as part of the body content of a page. In order to display an index page, every page must be retrieved to gather the field data.

Indexing this in Lucene will not only improve speed, but will open the possibility of developers being able to extended page properties (and form a path away from the almost defunct metadata-plugin) if they can programmatically access this data.