AW: [vorbis] What's in a name

[Burgwedel Friedrich]

To cite from www.xiph.org (the author's name of this text was not available
on the page):

The Ogg project began with a few-weekend-attempt at a simple audio
compression package as part of a larger project in 1993. At the time, the
software was called 'Squish'. The project and the general problem of music
compression became a personal fascination, and Squish took on a life of its
own far beyond the proportions of the original digital music studio project
of which it was to be part. 

A few months after the first Squish webpage, I received a polite but firm
letter informing me that Squish is a registered trademark (for a mail
transport system). Mike Whitson, a contributor to the cause in the early
days, suggested the name 'OggSquish' as a replacement.

An 'Ogg' is a tactical maneuver from the network game 'Netrek' that has
entered common usage in a wider sense. From the definition: 
3. To do anything forcefully, possibly without consideration of the drain on
future resources. "I guess I'd better go ogg the problem set that's due
tomorrow." "Whoops! I looked down at the map for a sec and almost ogged that
oncoming car." 
(see the rest of the definition  for the original Netrek usage.) 
At the time Ogg was starting out, most personal computers were i386s and the
i486 was new. I remember thinking about the algorithms I was considering,
"Woah, that's heavyweight. People are going to need a 486 to run that..."
While the software ogged the music, there wasn't much processor left for
anything else. 
These days, Ogg is a larger multimedia project that does not only concern
compression; Squish became the name of one of the Ogg codecs. For that
reason, we usually just refer to it as Ogg when there's no Netrek context
nearby. The Ogg project has nothing to do with the common surname 'Ogg'. Nor
is it named after 'Nanny Ogg' from the Terry Pratchett book _Wyrd Sisters_. 
The 'Thor-and-the-Snake' logo is drawn somewhat from Norse mythology; the
real symbolism is the sine-curve shape of the snake. Thor is hefting
Mjollnir about to compress the periodic signal Jörmungandr... See, it all
makes sense. 

Vorbis, on the other hand is named after the Terry Pratchett character from
the book _Small Gods_. The name holds some significance, but it's an
indirect, uninteresting story.

Ogg Vorbis is the current CODEC in development as part of the Ogg multimedia
project, begun immediately after Fraunhofer issued its 'Letter of
Infringement' to freeware MP3 encoder efforts. Vorbis is intended to go
head-to-head with the two current MPEG-4 compressions, AAC and TwinVQ. 

----------
Von:  Thomas Illingworth[SMTP:tom.Illingworth at ibase.com]
Gesendet: Donnerstag, 7. September 2000 11:02
An:  'vorbis at xiph.org'
Betreff:   RE: [vorbis] What's in a name

explanation taken from
http://music.zdnet.com/misc/lowdown/081500_oggvorbis.html

What does the name "Ogg Vorbis" mean?
First, Vorbis was taken from a character of an ''exquisitor'' in the book
"Small Gods," a title in a series of Terry Pratchett fantasy novels.
Formally, Vorbis is the name for the specific audio compression scheme used
to create Ogg Vorbis files. It is ultimately part of the Ogg Vorbis CODEC
project (a branch of the overarching, open-multimedia Ogg project), which is
headed by Christopher Montgomery and his team. 

-----Original Message-----
From: Teo de Hesselle [mailto:teo at nvnetworking.com]
Sent: 07 September 2000 10:57
To: vorbis at xiph.org
Subject: RE: [vorbis] What's in a name

> of these.  Since names often have some significance in the opensource
> movement and these are somewhat unusual, I was wondering if someone could
> comment on on OGG and Vorbis in particular?

It's all over the website.

Or it was :)

IIRC, "ogg" was to do something by brute force/ignorance until you got what
you wanted, from Nethack, apparently.

Thats all I remember.


--
Teo de Hesselle
NV Networking

teo at nvnetworking.com
0416 215 289

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