[vorbis] Tag Proposal -> Tag Standard

[John Morton]

On Friday 26 April 2002 07:34, Erik Stenborg wrote:

> But there are some items that seems like bad design to me:
> 1. Tag is located at the beginning of files
> 2. Multiple files with same name is permitted and even encouraged
>
> 1) Having the tag at the beginning makes changing of the tag difficult -
> the whole file has to be rewritten.

How often do you need to write a tag? Now, how often do you need to read the 
tags relative to writing them? If the tag is at the end of the file, you have 
to scan to the end to read it, which takes a lot longer than just reading it 
from the beginning. This really begins to add up if your playlist software 
likes to suck up all the tags of all the music you have.

You are right in observing that padding would help improve the write case 
significantly, it's just that no one has bothered to implement it yet. Feel 
free to come up with a patch :-)

> 2) I can't see any reason for having multiple fields with the same name.
> The example:
> ARTIST=Dizzy Gillespie
> ARTIST=Sonny Rollins
> ARTIST=Sonny Stitt
>
> is nothing I would be "jotting [as?] a quick note on the bottom of a CDR".
> Personally I would write "Performers: Dizzy Gillespie, Sonny Rollins and
> Sonny Stitt" - I would never repeat the word "performer" three times. For
> those who dont like "," as separator, there are several other to choose
> from in the character set, e.g.: CR, LF, CR+LF, FF, LSep, PSep etc... What
> is the purpose of having multiple fields with the same name?

Multiple feilds makes a field behave like a hash/dictionary/associative array. 
It's a nice feature, and it's not as if your tag editor or displayer has to 
present it that way.

John

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