[Theora] Theora file extension

[Nilesh Bansal]

<1087463776.3244.7.camel at otto.amantes>
Message-ID: <40D28C2F.4060200 at cs.ubc.ca>

>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.
>
>
>
Which codec is used in a media file is not that we should be discussing.
All that we need is some easy way of identifying weather a file is audio
or a video file. When i see a file on a ftp server, i should easily be able
find if its a audio or a video file. And there is _no_ solution to this
problem except to use different extensions.

A user doesn't care weather his image file is .jpg, .png or .gif and
extensions don't  serve any purpose other than human convinience.
So .png, .gif, and .jpg should be .img; .mng and some .mpg and
.wmv should be .vid; .wav, .ogg, and .mp3 should be .aud.

If main aim of extensions is just human convinience, then why not have
2 different extensions (.ogv and .oga??).


>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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