[vorbis] TAG Standard - ENSEMBLE/PERFORMER tags

[Glenn Maynard]

On Thu, Jan 03, 2002 at 12:04:17AM -0800, Craig Dickson wrote:
> Let's think about this... you had a file for which you wanted some
> additional information. Presumably because you don't own the CD that it
> came from; you got the file off the net? So you're dependent on how much
> information someone else, quite likely not someone known to you
> personally, chose to enter into the tags, and you hope they not only put

No, not really.  If I only tag a title as 夢, and I forget what 夢
means, I don't know how to read the title.  If I only tag the title as
"Dream", then I'm wrong (the title's not Dream, it's 夢 .)  If I only
title it with the romanization ("Yume"), then I'm still losing
information I actually want to see when the song plays.

> No, I think all that stuff doesn't belong in the file at all, and you're

So now it doesn't belong in the metadata stream, either?  I'd like to
hear your rationale for that.  People shouldn't have any place for it
at all?

> about to give me yet another good reason to believe as I do...

If "someone else wanting something you don't need" is a reason not to
want it, this discussion is probably meaningless.
 
> So, now you not only want all the information in the tags, but you also
> want it multiple languages? If it's a Chinese folk song, you want two
> copies of the title, one in Chinese (perhaps even in UTF-8 CJK codes?)
> and the other in English translation?

I've said as much multiple times.  (No, I don't want it required, and I
don't want it in the basic, comment-field tags format; you know this, of
course, since you read the other posts--right?)

You also seem to be suggesting that we shouldn't be using UTF-8, even though,
according to the documentation, we already are.  Mind clarifying this?  Do
you think we should use ASCII, and not allow any titles in any language that
requires non-Roman letters?

> How many of the people who rip CDs for fun are going to have both the
> expertise to do this right, and the inclination to bother? Almost none,
> I would guess, and I feel certain enough about that that I consider it
> absurd to want to redesign the tag scheme to support this feature. Its
> price/performance ratio, in practice, would be awful.

Which, as is already established (you are not, in fact, the only one
participating in this thread), is why that information goes in the
detailed metadata stream.

> Also, how big are the files going to be with all these duplicated tags?
> With RC3 at the default quality level, a 2:00 track (a slow performance
> of the Minute Waltz, perhaps) can be less than 2 MB. You start piling on
> all these tags in multiple languages and the file will be getting a lot
> bigger. And of course, since each Vorbis file has its own tags, if you
> rip an entire 12-song CD, you'll be wanting to duplicate quite a lot of
> information into each of those 12 files.

With twenty 40-byte tags and four translations of each, for 12 files, that's
38400 bytes.  Add a liberal 200% overhead, and that's 76800 bytes.  With 2*12
MB of other data, that's .3%--negligible.  And that is, of course, an extreme
example.

Arguing that having a place for data some people find interesting will
make the files too big is unconvincing.

> Your whole argument strikes me as a masterful reductio ad absurdum of
> this whole idea that tags should contain all sorts of information that
> is not necessary to identify the recording and which is easily available
> elsewhere (the CD booklet, most obviously, but also web sites such as

Your whole argument strikes me as one being made without reading the
rest of the discussion.  I've long since agreed that this information
does not belong in the basic tag format, due to its basic intentions.
If you don't believe this belongs in a metadata stream, either, then
please say so.

> All Music Guide and fan sites). You think we should not only have all
> sorts of inessential trivia encoded in the tags, but that at least some
> of the tags should be present in multiple languages! You mention the

Yep.  If I have a song with a title "夢", it's extremely useful to
have an English translation, "Dream", available.  (I often put both English
and Japanese titles in my filenames, and being able to derive filenames
from tags is something many people do.)  It's also a useful fallback for
players which can't handle the other character.  (I have multiple
computers, and not all of them have Japanese support installed.)

> title specifically, other things will vary from culture to culture also;
> a performer credit such as "Artur Rubinstein (piano)" really ought to be
> "Artur Rubinstein (klavier)" in German (or is "klavier" harpsichord? I
> don't recall, so of course I can't be expected to get this right if I
> ever want to put it in a tag). Not to mention date formats; I am often

If you, as a user, actually want to have that available, yes.  (I
probably wouldn't.)

> at least momentarily confused on the Web when I see dates like "6 12
> 2001" and don't know whether 12 June or 6 December is intended. So

Your sarcasm is stretching the limits of reason, here.  Dates should be
stored in a single, standard format, because that allows them to be
converted automatically to whatever the user's preference is.


-- 
Glenn Maynard

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