[vorbis] Why the commotion about file extensions?

[Paul E]

Ed Sweetman wrote:

> 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

People never used a divx program to make divx files though.  They would 
use VirtualDub, or FlaskMPEG/XMpeg, etc.  These programs stuck with .avi 
for the file extension, and why not?  It is after all an .avi.  Look at 
.ogm though.  That's what everyone uses for their video+vorbis right 
now.  I don't find people renamind their files to something else.  Well 
there is an exception many people who use P2P programs (specifically 
Kazaa) rename all video .mpg or .mpeg and a few go to .avi because those 
are the only file extensions that the programs will recognize.  Anyway, 
when the Ogg team releases Theora I'm guessing that their will be some 
program encode video into Theora and Vorbis, and I'm guessing that 
whatever extension that program spits out will become what people use.

Paul

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