[Flac-dev] flac in the filesystem?

[Josh Coalson]

--- Joshua Haberman <jhaberman at ups.edu> wrote:
> I disagree that adding flac support to all programs is "the right
> thing
> to do," simply because it's not necessary or realistic. In my
> scenerio,
> people will be accessing the music using many different programs and
> OSs,
> and there's no reason why each one should be required to learn about
> a
> different format when it's conceptually identical to reading a
> straight
> wav file. As someone who's doing development on an application
> involving
> digital audio, I can tell you that it's a pain spending time
> supporting
> umpteen different formats when each of them has a command-line
> encoder
> that understands wav just fine (but alas, that's what users want...).

this is the fundamental problem with having several formats.
I think the idea of making .flac files look like .wav files
and munging a layer that makes it work has the desired
effect for the developed but will ultimately be confusing
for the user.

the trend now is migrating to format-neutral 'layer'
libraries.  for audio, these would be like audiofile
and libsndfile, where the library handles the format
details and prevents a uniform interface to the data.
of course, then you have to pick a library that works
for you, and there may not be one.  but I think newer
tools now are starting to do that (at least open source
ones).

I am working on a FLAC plugin for audiofile, and next
will be libsndfile, if that's any consolation...

Josh


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