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

[Geoff Shang]

Hi:

OK, I'm a user and not a developer and have thus far kept my trap shut on
this issue and on most issues here in general.  but I feel that I have to
throw my 2c worth in on this one.  I acknowlege the arguments of the one
type position as being technically sound.  However, users don't think of
files this way.  A song with lyrics will be seen as an audio file.  A video
clip with 6 channels of audio including 4 different languages will be
considered a video file.  Even a videoclip of an audio song will be
considered a video file, whereas a file with audio and a still of the front
and back covers and a bunch of liner notes will be considered an audio
file.  A file with purely scrolling text and some other stuff like still
images and so-forth will be some other beasty.  MIME mightn't accurately
describe a file's contents, but I do feel that it represents how people
think of the files it tries to type-cast.

Perhaps non-serious as it was, the idea of placing all the details in the
type itself is not such a bad idea.  As argued before, modifying the file
manager to deal with one file type and detectable datatypes in the file
itself is a fiddly way to go about it.  And that's only in the cases where
actual change can come about.  Do you really expect that MS will modify
their windows explorer to go and detect your file type?  don't hold your
breath.  but if you implement how many ever MIME types you need, then you
can write a config utility where the user can define where lines are drawn,
with sensible default values and the particular file manager will cope just
nicely with it.  Of course, there's still the problem of matching type with
file, but there's obviously some ideas about that or the argument wouldn't
be about types, it'd be about filename extensions.

Geoff. <who doesn't usually use MIME in 90% of cases)


-- 
Geoff Shang <gshang10 at scu.edu.au>
ICQ number 43634701

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