AW: [vorbis] Why the commotion about file extensions?

[Hauke Duden]

Well, I only recently subscribed to this mailing list and do not know all
the history of this extension debate (I passed up on reading the hundreds of
messages that seem to have been written about this topic).

I just wanted to make one quick point: from my experience, the average user
does not know about file formats, only about content (my experience stems
from working for ashampoo (www.ashampoo.com) who specialize in creating
easy-to-use programs for non-tech savvy people). People don't quite grasp
what an .avi is, or divx or the difference between an .mp3, .wav or Vorbis
file. Especially on Windows where file extensions are hidden by default. It
is all tech-babble for them - they think in terms of "music" and "movies".

So the one thing that people seem to want to know is wether a file contains
audio or video. And technical issues aside (like starting the correct
program for a given file) this should somehow be made visible to the user.
In Windows this would mean displaying a different icon in Windows Explorer
for audio or video files. And this is where the problem lies if you use the
.ogg extension for both. It would be possible to write a shell extension
that examines the files and displays the correct icon, but that would mean
that every single file in a directory has to be accessed when the directory
is openend - not really feasible from a performance point of view if the
directory contains the personal music collection of 1000+ files.

I really see only one way to allow the user to differentiate between audio
and video files: using a different file extension. At the same time this
would solve issues like the filtering for file type in P2P networks as has
already be mentioned on this mailing list.

.ogg should probably be kept for audio, since it is already pretty well
known. So one could use .oggv or .ogv or something like that for video files
(theora, tarkin, and whatever else will come). In my opinion, that would be
the reasonable thing to do.

And another opinion about using the codec name for the extension: I think
.theora, .vorbis, etc. would simply be too confusing for the user. Joe
Average just doesn't know about audio encoding or algorithms (not even what
audio encoding or algorithms actually ARE), so these things would remain
abstract for him. As is an extension like .oggv, of course, but at least
that's only one thing to remember. If you inflate the extension namespace
with all the codec names, it will be much more difficult for the user to
remember which one's what and where the difference is.

I apologize if I have restated arguments that were already brought up
(looking at the amount of mails there is a pretty high probability that I
have done that). I just thought you might want to know the point of view of
our commercial "we need the average user to understand" side of the issue.

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