[vorbis] Why the commotion about file extensions?

[Tom Felker]

On Tuesday 15 July 2003 1:42 am, noprivacy at earthlink.net wrote:

> 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.

Programs using the Win16 API never see long extensions, programs using the 
Win32 API cannot depend on short extensions.  The common dialogs (open, save) 
are handled by a system library, and work fine.  I just can't imagine any 
situation where a long extension would cause a program to screw up.

Perhaps someone who uses Windows daily should rename their .ogg files to 
.vorbis and see what problems it causes.  Or we could ask some Flac users 
what problems they've had.  Googling for "'long extension' problems" turns up 
little.  (As long as it's less than 130 letters.)

> > 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.

People remember .mp3, .mpg, .avi, .wmv, and .wma because they've been pounded 
into their brain.  Unfortunately, we don't have the ability to pound things 
into user's brains, we're not that popular.  I think it would be better for 
the adoption of Xiph formats if their extensions corresponded exactly with 
what they are.

People refer to files by their extensions.  People say WAV, not Microsoft RIFF 
Wave, WMV, not Windows Media Video, and OGG, not Vorbis.  People won't 
remember that .ogt means Ogg Theora, they'll just call it OGT.  With .theora, 
people would say, "Oh look, a Theora file."

Also, think of a user looking at a Vorbis file for the first time.  Googling 
for ogg and vorbis bring you to vorbis.com, theora brings you to theora.org.  
Googling for ogv, ogt, and ogf don't bring you anywhere, and I don't think 
they ever will.  I think a .theora file makes it easier for a new user to 
find out what the fuss is about than a .ogt file would.

> 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.

There haven't been that many new formats since long extensions were practical, 
and those that are new have just been extensions of existing ones (except 
.flac, which did OK.)  Here we have a few completely new codecs, and they 
don't easily fit into three letters.

> 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.

If you can't tell by now, I'm a Windows expatriot, and one of the things I 
hate about it is the inelegance forced on it by DOS compatibility.  But 8.3 
filenames are almost dead, and I can't wait to finish the job.

> 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?

Good point, having .ogg be ambigious is a bad idea, and we need to 
differentiate at least between video and audio.  My mental block has been 
because I don't know what combined formats will be called.  For example, I'm 
assuming that video+audio will be Theora+Vorbis, but what will it be called?  
My preference has changed (again!), and I'm thinking Theora+Vorbis files 
should be called .theora, because any video player does audio also.

How about:

.ogg: Ogg Vorbis or Ogg Flac
.vorbis: Ogg Vorbis
.flac: Ogg Flac or Flac
.speex, .theora, etc.: themselves

"flac --explain" recommends that Ogg Flac be called .ogg, so I'm keeping that.  
The idea is that .ogg is slowly phased out, but until then, it's associated 
with audio players.  .flac would slowly change from mostly Flac to mostly Ogg 
Flac.  Any stream with more than one codec would be named based on which app 
can handle them all.  (So Theora+Vorbis would be .theora, because it should 
be played by a video player.)  Also, if people really wanted to, they could 
truncate the extensions, and they'd still make sense.  


-- 
Tom Felker

Life is like an analogy.

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