[ogg-dev] OggPCM: support for little-endianness only?

[Conrad Parker]

On 14/02/2008, Sampo Syreeni <decoy at iki.fi> wrote:
> On 2007-12-30, Timothy B. Terriberry wrote:
>
> > In any format that is to be used on both, it is always better to pick
> > one and stick with it.
>
> Then recommend one single format. Nobody *has* to support all of the
> features present, yet it makes sense to *allow* common variances. Most
> of all, because:
>
> > Unless you can guarantee that you're writing streams that are only
> > going to be passed within a single architecture, allowing both formats
> > is always worse.
>
> ...some people *are* able to guarantee that. Why hinder them?

I tend to disagree with your sentiment. The specification of any
format or protocol
has mandatory and recommended sections (not "features"); MUST and
SHOULD respectively for IETF and W3C stuff. The implication is that
any implementation which does not implement all of the MUST parts is
not compliant with the specification.

Details which are necessary for interoperability are necessarily
mandatory. I reckon that agreement on byteorder is pretty fundamental
for any data format.

Actually, this post is just an excuse to point to:
http://lists.slug.org.au/archives/slug-chat/2001/July/msg00054.html

cheers,

Conrad.