[vorbis] Why the commotion about file extensions?

[noprivacy at earthlink.net]

>I'm willing to forget about underscores (though they do make it more
clear),

They don't really make it 'clearer'.  And they tend to look a bit ugly in
filenames.  Not as bad as using a tilde, but not good.

>but I really dislike the idea of being constrained to three letters.  No
>operating system in active use limits the length of extensions.  If we had

What about p2p programs?  What about common applications?  When they go
looking / searching for specific file types, do any common ones use only 3
letters for the extension?

3 letter extensions have been around long enough that there is a significant
possibility that some / many programs might not like longer extensions.

Nearly ever file type uses a 3 letter extension so it's possible a lot of
programs haven't encountered longer extensions and may not have even been
tested with them.

And people will almost certainly convert them to 3 letters anyway.  Just
like with mpeg and jpeg have been shorted to mpg and jpg.

>Also, Windows users don't type extensions.  They don't even see extensions,
>they are hidden by default.  Probably most of them barely know they exist.

That's somewhat arguable.  It really depends more on what their computer
retailer did when they installed the OS.  (Yeah, I admit that most windows
users are brainless twits.)

However, they *will* see the extension in p2p apps, and when they go looking
for files with various programs (which do often show file extensions in the
file lists.)

>the color of the fish on Vorbis vs. Speex files.  Besides, Joe Sixpack
>doesn't like TLAs, and he'd probably like it if extensions were descriptive
>and easy to read.

I think "Joe Sixpack" knows enough to make his own decision, and isn't quite
as stupid as you'd like to believe.

Remember, we probably aren't talking about some brainless newbie who has
never used a computer before.  We are probably talking about somebody who
does own a home computer (rather than just at work), who knows enough about
computers to be able to play mp3, and probably knows that mp3 is audio and
mpg is video.  They may not be the smartest, but the mp3 revolution has
tought a few things to most computer users.

<p>>To anyone else reading, what do you prefer?  (using Vorbis as an example)

Tough call...

How about two generic extensions: .ogg for audio and .ogm for audio/video.

Ogg has been used *exclusively* for audio ever since Vorbis was released, so
many people equate ".ogg" as music / audio.  It's too late to change than
unless you have a time machine.  There's about as much chance of changing
people's mind on that as people remembering that mp3 is really "Mpeg-1,
Layer 3".

If you need others, then you can change the last extension letter.

That's not the best, but it may have the fewest side effects.

If you really really want to move away from ".ogg" to mean music files, then
you could do oga and ogv, for ogg audio and ogg video.  Which is similar to
the solution that Microsoft ended up with on the WMA and WMV extensions.

Ogg Theora would be ".OGT", assuming you actually cared what the codec was,
rather than whether the file was just audio or audio / video combo.  Or for
Theora, you could just call it THO or something.  (Or perhaps TEC, Theora,
Edison Carter.  Or .MHB for Max Headroom & Bryce?  Never mind... I'm getting
too far off.....)  You wouldn't actually have to have the 'ogg' part of the
extension, since that would be implicit.  Nobody would really need to know
the file container is ogg.  Just that it's "theora", just like mpg is
"mpeg-1".  It just "is" and nobody gives any thought to the file format
itself.

<p>--- >8 ----
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