[Flac-dev] Indexed FLAC file?

[George Barton]

Hi all,
    I have a very large music collection that I keep on a portable hard 
drive (to plug in to car USB, carry with when I'm at my office, etc). 
All but a few dozen files are part of an album, and not a single audio 
file. This translates to an insane amount of files stored on my hard 
drive. I am very strict about how I label and file my media (I loathe 
unlabeled audio tracks), but even so it is very tedious at times to 
navigate this file structure, and takes a long time to load in my car. I 
have seen other file formats (specifically one proprietary audio book 
format) that supported indexing, and think it would be a great feature 
to add to FLAC. Example...

Instead of having:
     \Dark Side of the Moon
         01 - Speak to Me.FLAC
         02 - Breathe.FLAC
         03 - On the Run.FLAC
         ...

Like a CD, you would have:
     Dark Side of the Moon.FLAC
         -01 - Speak to Me
         -02 - Breathe
         -03 - On the Run
         ...

It seems to me that a .cue (or something similar) file could be appended 
to the FLAC file, and the ID tags modified and merged to reflect the 
indexes. Any newer program/hardware could take full advantage of the 
indexes, and any older program/hardware would simply see the FLAC file.

I can see one major disadvantage. It would be more difficult to place a 
full playlist in shuffle mode without the program/hardware creating a 
master index detailing the contents of each file. However, many 
computer-based media players already do this.

I'm not very (any) good (at all) at coding, or I would have a go at 
creating this.

Just a thought...