[vorbis-dev] Multi-stream vorbis...

[illiminable]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Gregory Maxwell" <greg at motherfish-II.xiph.org>
To: <vorbis-dev at xiph.org>
Sent: Wednesday, June 02, 2004 4:28 AM
Subject: Re: [vorbis-dev] Multi-stream vorbis...

<p>> On Wed, 2 Jun 2004, illiminable wrote:
>
> > What you lose by having a single extension is....
> > a) The ability to determine a file type at a glance... i've already
started
> > double extensioning all my test files, because it annoyed me i had to
keep
> > looking at the headers in a hex editor to see what type of file i was
> > testing. People like to know in advance if they are about to open a
video or
> > an audio file.
>
> Hex editor?
>
> What kinda piece of crap platform are you on that doesn't use file magic
> to determine type or at least provide the 'file' command?
>

Well i do i have a little console app in my project which does it, but
seriously it's quicker to press F3 and spot the ident header than it is to
grab a console window and type some command followed by the name of the
file.

And whether *I* can do it is largely unimportant... we are talking about the
average user... most windows users don't even know they have a console. Let
alone how to navigate a directory hierarchy in it. They look at the file in
Explorer, they look at the pretty icon that gets associated with the file
type.

<p>> > c) You lose the ability to have seperate players be the default player
for
> > different types of files... for example i have iTunes attached to all
audio
> > files, and WMP attahed to all video files.
>
> So if you want to use differnt media players for differnt content use a
> wrapper that gets launched and figures it out, or lobby your OS maker to
> make the launcher smart enough to look deeper.
>

Seriously... be realistic. The whole point of the file extension is so you
don't have to look deeper. People can bury their heads in the sand and say
"LObby microsoft to change it", but it's only cutting off your nose to spite
your face. Different platforms have their own conventions... play by the
rules or fade into obscurity on that platform.

We are talking about general populace of users here.... if everyone is happy
with vorbis being a geeky format that for the most part only open-source
people and geeks have heard of, these kind of solutions are fine... if you
want people to have general acceptance of it, you have to play by the
conventions that are already established... not force people to use hacks
like this to do something which a simple decision to use a different file
extension would have solved.

A wrapper doesn't stop a program like itunes do a search of your hard disk
and putting all the files with certain extensions into your media library.
There are lots of other examples.

So several people have bagged the downsides i offered. But it seems they are
argueing against my position, rather than defending the current solution,
which is rather telling. Can someone tell me any advantage to having a
single extension... except some kind of abstract branding... which would
probably be better branded at a codec level.... and this use of "everying is
ogg" is part of what has caused confusion over what ogg is, and all the
peopel out there who seem to think ogg is some kind of audio codec.

Zen.
>
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