[vorbis] Why the commotion about file extensions?

[Paul E]

Beni Cherniavsky wrote:

>Jens =?iso-8859-1?q?Pr=FCfer?= wrote on 2003-07-14:
>  
>
>>Hello all,
>>
>>why is there all the commotion about file extensions? I do strongly believe
>>any software using those extensions for identification of file contents is
>>broken. After all, it is very easy to name a DivX Video .doc. Yet that ending
>>changes nothing about the contents of the file. Word will complain about the
>>content or (more likely) display a load of gibberish. More dangerously
>>changing .exe or .com to .txt is also possible, smuggling in malicious code
>>via email etc.
>>
>>Instead an up-to-date magic file and truely looking at file headers is the far
>>better way. Don't you aggree? I don't know, why this is not the standard way
>>to do things. I guess, because Microsoft thinks looking at three letter
>>extensions is good enough for them, it should be good enough for the rest of
>>the world as well.
>>
>>    
>>
>Good points and most of us agree to them (I do).  However, there is a
>problem.  It's not the purpose of Xiph to fight every misdesign in
>windows and to re-educate its users.  That would only result in most
>windows users being hostile towards Vorbis because it doesn't work the
>way thy are used to.  If they want extensions, let them have
>extensions.  After all, even in unix, you use extensions for most
>files because it is convenient.  So let's choose a few extensions for
>convenience.  And let the windows users be locked into them ;-).
>
I totally agree, although anyone can change the file extension from .ogg to whatever why would we care?  If someone does that they probably know what they are doing and should not be surprised if Microsoft Word can handle a divx/vorbis stream.

Unfortunately Windows is the dominant system for desktop use, by an overwhelming margin.  Is there any reason at all to "pick a fight" with ~97-98% of computer users?  Especially since a large portion of the remaining 2-3% are the ones like us who can adapt to however it is done with the most ease.  Ultimately why would I want a program to have to tell me what is in a file when I could get the same info from the name.  Isn't that part of what the name should tell me?  I already hate having to open up an AVI just to find out what codec the file uses.

I think that if you liken this to physical media it _might_ make more sense.  Suppose that your CDs and DVDs all had the same type of case and you had a sufficiently large number of them (because these days people have thousands of files) that you don't know exactly what is what.  Would you want to have to stick the disc in a device that would tell you if it was a DVD or CD?  Sure at home maybe you use the same device (application) to play either disc (file) but what about in the car, or for your discman?  It wouldn't make sense at all for both CDs and DVDs to be called the same thing.  That's why there are DVD-Movies (ie .ogm) and DVD-Audio/CDs (ie .ogg).  They don't try and go under the same name of just DVD and let the people figure it out somehow.  It is WAY TOO easy to just name them slightly different.  Even though they are very similar (same container, audio is probably in the same format, only one has an additional video stream).  It just needs to be simple I think.  In a way that people can relate it to tangible things.

Paul

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