Parsability requirements of PART tag (Was: Re: [vorbis] Vorbis Comment question)

[al goldstein]

On Fri, 4 Jul 2003, Benjamin Weste Pearre wrote:

Why not indicate the order on the track lable? Eg: 01farfel1.ogg;
02farfel2.ogg; 03gumball1.ogg;04gumball2.ogg ;05gumball3.ogg etc.

Al

> On Thu, Jul 03, 2003 at 08:26:42PM -0700, Jonathan Walther wrote:
> > On Thu, Mar 13, 2003 at 10:36:47AM -0800, David K. Gasaway wrote:
> > >Note: I dislike the parsability requirements for the PART tag spelled
> > >out at reactor-core.
> >
> > I didn't realize there were any parsability requirements for the PART
> > tag.  Could you refresh my memory, and tell me what you would like to be
> > different?  Any problems are probably artifacts of the original first
> > version, and didn't get hashed out adequately before discussion of other
> > aspects led to it being forgotten.
> >
> > Jonathan
>
> The parsability requirements are these:
>
> Many pieces of music have different parts: the movements of a string
> quartet (often about 4), the bits of an opera (usually about 40), etc.
> Note that since often there will be two symphonies on a CD, or one
> opera on 3 CDs, TRACKNUMBER does not effectively communicate what
> order to play things in.  Moreover, tracknumbers are an artifact of
> CDs that we don't want to take with us from CD to pure information.
>
> Here's an example: please put the following four tracks in the order
> that will actually make sense musically:
>
> Verdi - Requiem - Dies Irae.ogg
> Verdi - Requiem - Libera Me.ogg
> Verdi - Requiem - Sanctus.ogg
> Verdi - Requiem - Requiem & Kyrie.ogg
> Verdi - Requiem - Agnus Dei.ogg
> Verdi - Requiem - Lux Aeterna.ogg
> Verdi - Requiem - Offertory.ogg
>
> Here, we have something like
>
> COMPOSER=Verdi
> PIECE=Requiem
> PART=Sanctus
>
> or something like that.
>
> Now try this:
>
> PART=(04) Sanctus
>
> ...or...
> PART=Sanctus
> PARTNUMBER=4
>
> Note that on the source CD, the tracks (while in the right order)
> started at 4 and went up to 10 (PART=(07) Sanctus, etc).  It would
> have been more fun if I'd used a multi-disk example, since then there
> would have been no useful order information at all in the track
> number.
>
> Since building knowledge of the correct order of the parts of a
> requiem into every Ogg player doesn't make a whole lot of sense, I
> suggested that there be a tag to represent the order that the tracks
> should come in.  For some reason that I still don't understand, I was
> shot down.  However, they graciously compromised and wrote that
> gobbledygook that basically says "The PART tag is where you hack in
> information about what order the tracks should be in".
>
> I still think that it was the wrong decision, but I don't feel like
> going up against reactor-core, since I think that a bad standard is
> better than none (=too many).
>
> One possibility is to usurp TRACKNUMBER.  This is useful because
> tracks are mostly irrelevant once we've left the realm of the CD.
> However, it is not useful (ie player software can't try to use it)
> unless a majority of people agree to it.
>
> The argument against machine-parseable tags is something like "the
> metadata will handle that; tags are just for people and shouldn't be
> restricted".  Since there is no metadata yet, this argument translates
> to "It is not yet the software's responsibility to try to put a bunch
> of pieces into the right order", which means that everyone who needs
> this feature (most anyone who cares about classical music or Pink
> Floyd) will need to choose between the awkward PART hack and some
> personally-devised solution.  So much for standards...
>
> Oops - I didn't mean to write all that, but it's a good, um, what's
> that word... "unbiased" summary for newcomers!  Oh, and did I mention
> that the infidel American troops are fleeing from our righteous wrath?
>
> Cheers :)
> -Ben
>
> --
> Ben Pearre         http://hebb.mit.edu/~ben        PGP ID: CFDA6CDA
> Stop sending insecure email!                   http://www.gnupg.org
>
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