[vorbis] Why the commotion about file extensions?

[noprivacy at earthlink.net]

> > 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
>
> 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

Not necessarily crashing, but it may not recognise it.  Or work
"imperfectly".

As I said, 3 letter extensions are the norm, so it's not impossible for
programmers to get careless.

> 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.

Assuming there are any, yes they should be fixed.  But how likely is that?
And how likely is it that users will use the old version instead of the new
version?  Especially if the new version is a commercial program that they
don't feel like paying $$$ to upgrade for.

I'm just saying it's a possibility and that if you are serious about long
extensions, you should check, rather than assuming it will work right
everywhere, or just dismissing it as being unimportant.

<p>> > 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

I see a lot of HTM pages on web servers.

I don't keep counts, but I *definetly* see a lot of htm pages on web
servers.  Not just personal pages but even commercial sites.

I remember a couple years ago, I was going to set up a personal web site on
some free web place, and one of the notes to the users was that they
converted all HTML extensions into HTM.  (I don't remember what place, and I
serously doubt they still exist.  But they did exist and that was just a
couple years ago, not in ancient times.)

My old web site development program (Trellix) is an automatic web page
generator, and it creates pages with HTM extensions.  Since it generates the
pages automatically from the wysiwyg stuff you've done, and uploads it
automatically, it doesn't even give the option to use HTML.

As I said, I see HTM a lot.

People seem to be pretty attached to TLE's even if it isn't necessary.

> 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.

Well... They originally named Mpeg-1 as Mpeg, didn't they?  And that got
shorted...  When they released mpeg-4 they deliberately gave it a 3 letter
extension.  It's likely they considered longer extensions but deliberately
chose a 3 letter one so there wouldn't need to be any shortening.

> I can't see anyone
> shortening an extension now, because there's no reason to.

You and I obviously have a different opinion about this.  I see it more as a
certainty.

<p>> My point is that if you do see the extensions (and you should), then they

Yeah, I wish Microsoft would change that.  Every system I set up has that
enabled.  Doing that would probably prevent a fair share of the viruses &
trojans that newbies run.

> 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.

People remember & pronounce mp3 just fine.  And mpg.  And AVI.  And WMV.
And WMA.

None of those are pronouncable (as words) but they are well remembered.

But yeah, if you start doing .OGA and OGV and OGT and OGF and OGS etc.,
people are going to get confused.

> If we limit ourselves to TLE's, why not eight-letter filenames?  In 1995,

Because:

1) we aren't concerned about filenames in this disccusion.  We're talking
about extensions and / or ways to identify Ogg files.

2) Most / Many people *expect* short file extensions.  Both users and
programmers.

Do you really think the Ogg project is the first group to ever consider
using longer extensions?  How many of those have survived (and prospered!!)
without being shortened by users?  You could probably count them on one
finger with space left over.

> 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,

Yeah... and even after all this time, you'll still rarely ever see long
extensions.  A lot of long filenames, but few long extensions.

Even more than one period isn't used all that often (it's rarely needed and
some programs get a wee bit confused, even after all this time.  Usually
it's just a matter of incorrect sorting or something minor.)

<p>> 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

That is a bit of a risk.  *ESPECIALLY* considering that for the past year or
so, ".ogg" has exclusively meant audio.  A lot of people have already gotten
used to that.

> 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.

I don't really have any problem with that, although I'm still not so sure
about long extensions.  To some degree, it may be my ingrained preference
for TLE's!  I've been using a computer for a quite a few years (since Dec
'82) and I've kind of gotten used to them.

Maybe brainless newbies would get used to them better than us old timers.
....Although W9x has had long extensions since 96 or so and that still
hasn't happened yet.  You'd think that in those 7 years, people would start
using long extensions and get used to them and that by now 95% of users
would be comfortable, but just hasn't happened yet.

> In practice, this means Winamp associates with .ogg, .vorbis, and .flac.
CDex

It also means that P2P programs will have to search for several audio types
and the generic OGG type.  And that means a lot of false matches.  A lot of
videos returned instead of audio.

But what is supposed to happen (ie: officially) when a program (ie: Winamp)
opens up an .ogg expecting music but gets video or some codec it doesn't
know?  Is it supposed to barf right then or should it do the best it can
with its limited abilities, or what?

It's going to happen, and it'd be a little nice if the programs were a bit
consistant with this.

> would write .vorbis or .flac by default.  So .vorbis means lossless music,
> and .ogg can be anything, but usually audio.

I still have a problem with "usually"....

I know, I know... that's just an aspect of a "container", and people can
always misname the file type, etc.

But people are starting to get used to OGG as being music.  Changing it is
almost going to be like a whole new type to them.

And the p2p programs are going to get confused and start returning videos
instead of music (probably due to deliberate misnaming, but we can't prevent
that).

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