[vorbis] Tag Recommendations: Addressed Concerns That Were Raised

Thu Apr 25 13:27:37 PDT 2002

On Thu, Apr 25, 2002 at 10:15:40AM +0200, Segher Boessenkool wrote:
>b) Concerns _have_ been brought forward, they just have been ignored.

Lets address them then, one by one.

>http://www.xiph.org/archives/vorbis/200112/0083.html (me)

To quote Segher:

   Kind (1) is what the Vorbis comment header is: human readable comments.
   It's just the same as if you're sitting in a bar and tell a friend
   "hey, have you heard the new song XXX by YYY already?" It's just some
   textual comments about a track, nothing more, nothing less. And most of
   all, there are no requirements to it. No mandatory tags, no nothing.

   Of course, *some* consistency in this might be nice, just as in the bar
   you say "the song XXX by the band YYY" and not "the cow XXX by the table
   YYY". 

You summed up nicely the goal of the Recommendations.  May I ask what
the concern was that wasn't addressed?

>http://www.xiph.org/archives/vorbis/200112/0401.html (Rillian)

To quote Rillian:

   We've always said we'd like to have a separate metadata format, one that
   does it's best to be all things to all people. Where that belongs is in
   a separate logical ogg bistream, mixed in with the vorbis data. I think
   xml is great too, and we've had many arguments. What we really need is a
   good sane implementation of something. :)

   One route I've been pointing out for the past year is to just import the
   MusicBrainz format. I think it needs some work from the design point of
   view, but there's a ready implementation of the parser and an
   established database to query. 

I don't see a conflict here.  Vorbis allows various arbitrary streams to
be mixed in with an Ogg stream.  Yes, that means there can be a separate
"metadata" stream that contains information about the ogg file.  Maybe
it will even be in XML.  But that isn't related to the Comment Field
Recommendations.  May I ask what the concern was that wasn't addressed?

>http://www.xiph.org/archives/vorbis/200112/0162.html (Monty)

To quote Monty:

   It is also the case that we're looking for a happy, informal, system
   that is perhaps erring *slightly* on the side of overkill, and that
   most people can ignore safely. Remember; the vast majority of these
   tags will not be populated beyond what an automated ripper gets back
   from a CDDB or FreeBD query.

   The original statement of 'the current crop of tags is too pop
   centric; here's a few more people can use' is one I agree with.
   The idea is neither to formally standardize tags people *must*
   use, or try to modify user behavior to fill in 25 tags correctly;
   it's to make a list of tags such that several unconnected,
   motivated groups who *do* want more complete information, by
   default, end up using mostly the same things.  

   I do not want a complex or programmatic tag system with rules like
   'presence of ARTIST and absence of COMPOSER shall imply that GENRE is
   to be modified to mean...'. Any such proposal gets vetoed.
   Subtagging is an interesting idea, but overboard. It also cannot be
   implemented without changing the 1.0 tag spec. So it is also veteoed. 

Monty has summarized the goals, intent, and current state of the
Recommendations admirably.  May I ask what the concern was that wasn't
addressed?

>http://www.xiph.org/archives/vorbis/200112/0138.html (Monty)

To quote Monty:

   Aside from whether or not subtagging is a good idea or not (IMHBCO,
   it's not a good idea), it cannot be implemented. The format is frozen
   at 1.0, and this cannot be done within the 1.0 spec. Sorry folks,
   we've been in format feature freeze since June, and this idea cannot
   be implemented without breaking decoders that have already been
   guaranteed to work forever.

There never was any "subtagging" in the Recommendations; there still is
not; and I expect there never will be.  May I ask what the concern was
that wasn't addressed?

>and many many more.

Please keep them coming; I would like to ensure there is nothing unclear
or ambiguous about the work that has been done on the Ogg Vorbis Comment
Field Recommendations.

** The following text and my replies were originally before the above
** quoted text.  I moved it here for the clarity of this email.

>No.  The Vorbis comments have one goal: provide human-readable comments.

The Ogg Vorbis Comment Field Recommendations also has that goal, and
fulfills it nicely.

>> 2) As far as traffic to this list, it seems very little has been
>> decided about a new meta-data format which would supplant comment tags.
>Then maybe you should focus on working on it?

Neither David nor I is particularly interested in a metadata format.
The current system of comment fields is sufficient for our needs.

>Any program that doesn't show *all* tags is not compliant.  If a program
>restricts the user in what tags he can input, users will not like it.

That statement doesn't seem to have anything to do with the content of
the Ogg Vorbis Comment Field Recommendations.

>If, on the other hand, you want to search for a certain file, you should
>use some library program.  A database like that restricts the user in

I disagree.  I see no reason standard unix command line tools like grep,
in conjunction with the vorbiscomment utility, shouldn't be sufficient
to find the Ogg I want by the contents of its comment fields.

Cheers!

Jonathan

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