[ogg-dev] "Any who has ever written an Ogg (de)muxer curses it's name frequently" (sic)

[Ivo Emanuel Gonçalves]

>From some random dude on Slashdot
[ http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=224420&cid=18177356 ]:

"Second, whether AVI is better or worse than Ogg is debatable. Any who
has ever written an Ogg (de)muxer curses it's name frequently. It's
extremely codec-specific, and the format is rather loosely defined,
with no consistent standard way to do much of anything....

AVI has it's limitations, but they are few. Most of the problems
people experience with AVI is due entirely to limited software which
doesn't properly handle AVIs. The rest of the problems tend to be a
result of lack of standards... For instance, Vorbis can fit into AVI
just fine, but unfortunately, Xiph didn't define HOW exactly, so
everyone has started doing it in their own, mutually incompatible way.
Ditto for subtitles, and other meta-data.

So, the biggest problem with AVI is lack of any single official
standards authority. Ogg has the same problem, but worse, since Xiph
have ignored all efforts to extend Ogg to handle other formats, and
now nothing is compatible."

I'm bringing up this message for discussion.

"For instance, Vorbis can fit into AVI just fine, but unfortunately,
Xiph didn't define HOW exactly, so everyone has started doing it in
their own, mutually incompatible way."

I wasn't even aware of this.  I'm sure this wasn't intentional, and
surely there's bigger priorities on what must be done around here, but
if this is true, it's pretty bad.

Vorbis shouldn't be a format only for Ogg.  Since its specification is
under the public domain, we should allow it to work on any other
container, no matter how bad or proprietary it is, because only by
allowing freedom of use to Vorbis will it become mainstream.

Out of curiosity, how hard is to write a tiny API explaining what is
the official method of having Vorbis contained in other formats?

"Ogg has the same problem, but worse, since Xiph have ignored all
efforts to extend Ogg to handle other formats, and now nothing is
compatible."

According to Wikipedia, Tobias Waldvogel has donated all Ogg Media
code to Xiph.  Why then is Ogg still unable to cope with any other
format outside of Xiph?  Are there technical problems?  Will we have
this working one day?

Food for thought, really, but this kind of little buggers are stalling
interest in Xiph's work.  I think we must find solutions and get a
roadmap going, or something in that regard.

-Ivo