[vorbis-dev] Mime Type and Ogg (More)

[Ali Abdin]

On Mon, 13 Nov 2000, Dan Conti wrote:

> On 13 Nov 2000, Maciej Stachowiak wrote:
> > 
> > xiphmont at xiph.org (Monty) writes:
> > 
> > [snip]
> > mime type will definitely live for 20+ years as well, whether you like
> > it or not. mime type is not perfect (more than 2 levels of hierarchy
> > and decent support of containers are two things it does not handle
> > well) but it's too ingrained in too many things to go away. Life sucks
> > that way. 
> 
> I dont see how you expect it to survive for 20+ years when such a
> challenge exists to adapt it to container types. See more below.
> 
> > Further, the definition of the mime types is external to the code or
> > file format itself. If the world ever abandons mime types, it will be
> > easy to ignore the previous mime type definitions.
> > 
> > > > Why are you trying to make things hard on people who don't share your
> > > > preference?
> > > 
> > > This requires only a little extra technical tinkering to make it clean
> > > *and* convenient.  We're no more likely to give up our design than you
> > > are yours.  Neither one of us has to.
> > 
> > I disagree. A lot of people have some prima donna file format that
> > they think should be handled specially, but hardcoding special
> > handling of each of them is a waste of valuable time. 
> > 
> > It's not like having three mime types ("audio/x-ogg", "video/x-ogg",
> > "application/x-ogg") creates a huge administrative or coding burden.
> 
> So what happens when someone puts a meta data stream for lyrics in an ogg
> bitstream? Or (for whatever reason) someone streams subtitles along with a
> movie, but in a seperate stream? Maybe the administrative or coding burden
> is small now, but your approach generates recurring maintenance.
> 
> > It's not like it even fundamentally affects the design, since the
> > magic to do the detection will aready be there.
> > 
> > And it has trivial effect on the user/developer experience for people
> > who want to treat all three types exactly the same.
> > 
> > 
> > I do not buy the cleanliness argument. Epicycles sure seemed more
> > clean than a helicentric model for a while. But the proof is in the
> > resulting total system complexity.
> > 
> > Sorry if I sound a bit strident here. I am a bit frustrated at having
> > to argue the same point repeatedly.
> 
> My compliments to you for your ability to religiously argue your point in
> the face of so many non-believers. I urge you to consider that you have
> consistently used a linear and restrictive approach to how files should be
> treated by any given system; not once have you considered that rather than
> adapting ogg to suit your needs, that a more reasonable solution
> exists. I also urge you to consider that, whereas this is a project in
> development and input at this phase can possibly impact results, there are
> other bitstreams that are have been through a few revisions, and if your
> system can't properly address this problem with ogg then it will likely
> have trouble with those formats.

There is no "standard" for determining a file's type except through 
mime-type (and extension (according to windows)). If Eazel/Nautilus 
developed its own scheme that fixes the mime-type's defficiencies, it 
wouldn't mean jack shit because nobody would use it (not to mention that 
other people will complain that Nautilus has its own "weird" non-industry 
standard requirements).

Now the problem is if every person creating a new file-format would use 
their own "scheme" of determining the file's type (because mime is 
insufficient) then programs like Nautilus will be hard-pressed to support 
all these new different schemes for determining a file type (especially 
since each one will have its own "unique" way of doing things).

And note - this is not actually a Nautilus issue, it is a gnome-vfs issue 
(just in case you think this is some sort of 'corporate Eazel conspiracy')
 
> And that's the sum of my interest in beating this dead horse.

Why is it a "dead horse"? I thought the purpose of this mailing list was 
to debate (and therefore give arguments) supporting one method or another?

I also thought the Ogg developers were looking into supporting the 
mime-magic stuff?

Regards,
Ali

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