[vorbis] TAG Standard - ENSEMBLE/PERFORMER tags

[Glenn Maynard]

On Fri, Jan 04, 2002 at 09:18:42PM -0800, Dan Hollis wrote:
> > It wouldn't be that hard to have multiple tag blocks, with each block
> > having a language/nation header. But it seems quite mad to me, both
> > because of size concerns (especially in conjunction with all the extra

Adding features doesn't mean they have to be used.  Allowing all the
tags in the world and twenty ways to translate, transliterate, mutate,
decorate and animate information doesn't add significantly to the size of
the tags for people who don't use them.

You always pay a small, one-time space fee for a class of features, of
course.  For example, adding the ability to have multiple versions of a
tag in the metadata field might change
<tag type="title">Title</tag>
to
<tag type="title"><entry>Title</entry></tag>
for the basic use.  That's negligible, however, since it allows a large
number of useful things to be done.

> > tags you and Glenn want) and because it's silly to think that more than
> > a tiny fraction of users will ever enter all of this data once, much
> > less again in another language.
> 
> If it's not hard to do, why not leave the door open rather than shut out 
> those people who would find such a feature very useful?

I agree that this logic alone isn't enough to rule things out.  Most users
don't need the power of a Unix shell, either. :)  (It's enough if it's
the extreme: "nobody, anywhere will ever use this", however.)  If it's
not likely to be used *much*, I'd ask whether it's really useful to the
few people who would.  If it is, it's worth considering anyway (within
reason.)  If not, only then should it be called "bloat".

However, there are other reasons not to do this in the *tag* block.  (It
boils down to "it doesn't help the real goals", such as those in
https://reactor-core.org/~djw/ogg-tags.txt.)  This above logic only
applies to a format intended to be comprehensive, and the tags are not.

> Seems incredibly stupid to me to arbitrarily limit a spec simply because 
> you yourself can't see a widepread use for it. That's microsoft-style 
> thinking.

Rolling up the sleeves, are we?


-- 
Glenn Maynard

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