[vorbis-dev] The Oft Maligned comment field, initial thoughts.

[Adam Scriven]

Hey all.
Ok, so I'll stand up and be counted a newbie in this list too (just did the 
same for the General discussion list).  I (once again) read through the 
archives, especially the ones concerning the comment field.

First, I'm not a developer, per se.  I'm merely an anal-retentive power 
user of such things, who likes to have my music archived, and sorted.

In reading through the comment tags discussion, I noticed that, once you 
allow one thing, everyone else jumps in with what's important to them, and 
you start to duplicate the proposed XML MetaData stream 
unnecessarily.  Having a short field for identification purposes is a lofty 
goal, but one, I think, that is harder to reach than would seem 
apparent.  One person noted that he has 8 copies of an Orbital song (pls. 
correct me if I'm wrong, I can't seem to find the reference again), and so 
merely having ARTIST/SONG TITLE in the comment field would not be enough 
for unique identification, but to go any further leads down the slippery 
slope of "Genre's critical for me", and "What about Track Number".

I would like to propose that all identification is left to the XML 
stream.  As Patrik Rådman posted (Re: [vorbis-dev] comment field proposal, 
Fri 12 May 2000 - 20:27:22 PDT), you can identify the basics of a song with 
the filename, as he does.  Now, I'm not trying to force anyone to do it MY 
(I guess in this case HIS) way, but the line must be drawn somewhere, and 
that will inevitably piss other people off.

I notice, in re-reading the archive, that I'm pretty much seconding what 
Mark Elrod said (Re: [vorbis-dev] comment field proposal, Fri 12 May 2000 - 
14:36:17 PDT).

As Monty pointed out, the Comment field is currently being used to identify 
the vendor.  Why not keep this comment field for technical information 
only, and use the XML field for information and MetaData?

I don't know how viable this is, and I guess it's up to Monty to draw the line.

Just my thoughts, I'll go back to reading now.
Adam

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