[vorbis] Why the commotion about file extensions?

[Ed Sweetman]

Paul E wrote:
> Ed Sweetman wrote:
> 
>> People will name their files whatever they want in the end though.  
>> any sort of official saction of extensions is just a suggestion at best. 
> 
> 
> Actually people generally use whatever extension programs use and create 
> by default. I don't know anyone (althought I'm sure there is someone, 
> one being the operative word) that changes all their mp3s to mpegl3 for 
> mpeg layer 3 which is more precise.  Developers decide more what the 
> extensions are and I think most of them would/will listen to a 
> suggestion from the folks that have so wonderfully blessed us with these 
> open media standards.
> 
> Paul

you cant compare to propriatary filetypes and especially windows 
originated filetypes from the days of win9x.  It was necessary to have 
extensions be of a single type and it was easy to control that when all 
your players and encoders start out as closed source programs.  Yes your 
developers decide the extensions here. But in the current decade, 
extensions dont mean anything to programs.  They're only there for 
people to readily recognise the type of file they're dealing with. A 
properly coded program doesn't care if i name a media file 
"whatever.thisfilenamesucks", it'll still play it if it contains what it 
understands.  So, in getting away from the stupid  dependency of file 
extensions, you've removed any real power developers have over the 
extension.  All you can do is suggest it be something, hope it catches 
on and people use it.  Having extensions be the full name of all the 
codecs, .vorbis .speex, .flac  is probably not going to catch on. Too 
much typing and it makes the filename which people already make long for 
media files, even longer. If someone has a choice between a shorter 
extension or a longer one, they're gonna choose the shorter one out of 
convenience.  It may be confusing to people who have no idea what 
they're doing at all what, in example, a .omi is but i bet it would be 
used anyway in preference to .theora, just like the attempt to get 
people to use .divx failed horribly (and yes there was one when divx4 
was started by the people who made the tools) to the use of .avi

less work always wins over more work. Just ask mp3 users what mp3 even 
stands for. Most dont know, why? It doesn't matter, it's just a way to 
tell them that they use "This" player to work with "These" files.  The 
only people who care what the letters actually mean are people who 
aren't so clueless that they'd get confused by shorter extensions that 
dont spell out the entire codec.

<p>> 
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