[vorbis] Why the commotion about file extensions?

[Tom Felker]

On Monday 14 July 2003 10:53 pm, noprivacy at earthlink.net wrote:
> >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.

Fair enough.

> >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.

If a program crashes because of a long extension, it's broken and needs to be 
fixed.  If it does nothing, that's only a problem if it should do something 
to recognize our files.  I don't think there are any programs that need to 
use our files, but do nothing with long extensions.  I can vouch for 
GTK-Gnutella working with long extensions.  If there are such programs, I'd 
be interested to hear about them, but it's better to fix them than to make 
policy around 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.

What about .html, which is almost never shortened?  I think before, when DOS 
was popular, extensions got shortened because there was no other way.  HTML 
escaped because who ever stored HTML files in DOS?  I can't see anyone 
shortening an extension now, because there's no reason to.

> >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.)

Every time I use a Windows computer, unchecking "hide extensions" is the first 
thing I do.  Then I hide Clippy.  Ugh.

My point is that if you do see the extensions (and you should), then they 
should be something informative and pronouncable.  .vorbis or .ogg is better 
than .mp3, .og?, .etc.  We shouldn't make it harder to remember which 
extensions go with which formats by condensing it all to TLEs.

If we limit ourselves to TLE's, why not eight-letter filenames?  In 1995, 
Microsoft removed the 8.3 limits, allowing for long filenames AND long 
extensions.  If an app hasn't been changed since then, it deserves to die, 
and we certainly should limit ourselves based on it.

<snip>

> >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.

I'm still trying to figure this out myself.  Now I'm thinking that the best 
way is to make anything using the Ogg container .ogg.  This means if you 
associate your app to .ogg, it better know how to handle anything.  But Ogg 
streams that contain a single specific codec could be named after that codec 
(.vorbis, .flac, .speex, .theora).  This way, when in doubt, you can call it 
.ogg, but when you know what it is, you can call it by the specific name.

In practice, this means Winamp associates with .ogg, .vorbis, and .flac.  CDex 
would write .vorbis or .flac by default.  So .vorbis means lossless music, 
and .ogg can be anything, but usually audio.


-- 
Tom Felker

Hack user friendliness onto a pure and simple system, because
you can't hack purity and simplicity onto a user friendly system.

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