[Theora] Theora file extension

[Thomas Vander Stichele]

<1087397268.3244.0.camel at otto.amantes>
<1205602105.20040616173638 at guest.arnes.si>
Message-ID: <1087463776.3244.7.camel at otto.amantes>

On Wed, 2004-06-16 at 17:36, Jernej Simon?i? wrote:
> On Wednesday, June 16, 2004, 16:47:49, Thomas Vander Stichele wrote:
>
> > is a wav that contains an mp3 file a wav or an mp3 ?
>
> How often do you see an MP3 file with a WAV header that has WAV extension
> instead of MP3?

As a developer on GStreamer, I often see
mp3-contained-in-wav/riff-header-renamed-to-mp3, which is incredibly
broken on three different points.

You seem to suggest it's actually the right thing to do ?

Let's see - .wav is a well-defined file format, having a riff header,
with an id that says what type of data it is.  If the type of data is
mp3, then the id says so.  So far, so good.  It's clearly established
that this is a fully compliant .wav file that just happens to contain
mp3 audio.

Now you're telling me that the right thing to do is to rename it to have
an .mp3 extension ?

Are you the guy that creates all those files that makes us shake our
heads as developers wondering what the creator was thinking when he
deliberately broke specs and formats ?

> > is an .avi containing only audio an audio file or a video file ?
>
> I haven't ever seen an AVI file that wouldn't contain video.

Why do you give an answer to a question I didn't ask ?

> > is an .mp4 file containing only audio an audio file or a video file ?
>
> Why did extension OGM become popular for Ogg files that contain video?
> Because it's much easier to just look at the file name and know "this
> contains video".

No, because OGM is not Ogg, and the people that hacked up OGM decided to
name it OGM.  That's it.  AFAIK Xiph has *always* declared that files
with .ogg extensions are whatever type of media as long as it uses the
ogg container.

>  Or, if you list files in a graphical file manager, it's
> faster to just look at the icon to tell what kind of file it is. And guess
> what's the fastest way to assign a file type icon to a file?

I'll tell you and it's not what you think.  The fastest way is either
completely random or just use the same icon for everything.  With your
practice of putting mp3-in-wav then renaming to mp3, it will actually be
more often right than what you think is the fastest way, namely checking
the extension.

Thomas

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