[vorbis] File Extension .OGG

[Tom )]

> > FWIW, I strongly agree with Tom Tobin here. ".ogg" should mean one
> > thing (presumably audio), and there should be another (I suggest ".vog")
> > for video files.
>
> This is what Microsoft did with RIFF waveforms (.WAV) and RIFF video
> (.AVI)  Personally I'd prefer a .RIFF on both of them.  My vote, for what
> it counts, goes to just .ogg for whatever data is framed with ogg.
>
> Tony Arcieri

But don't you see?  Users have *audio players* associated with WAV files,
and *video players* associated with AVI files.  If both were RIFF, two
negatives would result:

1) Users would only be able to properly associate one case (all RIFF's with
their preferred audio player, for example, forcing them to open all video
RIFF's by hand in the video player); and
2) Users could not easily differentiate between filetypes in a quick
filesystem scan or network search.

Simply because one prefers the aesthetics of a unified filename does not
make it the most practical case.  Windows users, especially, rely heavily on
filetype associations -- and these are the very same users who make up a
large part of the current MP3 userbase.  How do you think they would fare if
both MPEG audio and MPEG video used an MPG extension?  Do you think they
would enjoy trying to open a movie only to have Winamp report "Unknown file
type," for example?

We have to deal with the *practical* situation at hand here.  Having
separate filename extensions for audio and video meets this demand, and
ensures Ogg will not be bogged down by issues such as the aforementioned in
the future.

I will say this in closing: there's a *reason* MPEG and RIFF files don't use
the same filename extension for both audio and video.

Tom "Korpios" Tobin
korpios at korpios.com

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