[vorbis] Vorbis Comment question

[John Morton]

On Mon, 03 Mar 2003 03:53, Segher Boessenkool wrote:
> Benjamin Weste Pearre wrote:
> > I know that some of the developers share that view.  So sorry, but
> > asking that no attempt be made to make the tags machine-readable is
> > simply stupid:
> >
> > * These files will live on computers.  Computers need something
> >   parseable.
>
> The only thing computer programs are allowed to do with tags are
> displaying the tags to users, and letting users edit the tags.

Computer programs _ought_ to allow users to fill tags in with arbitary 
strings, and _ought_ to display those arbitary strings as is, but I wouldn't 
be too upset if some editor helped me enter the DATE tag as a proper date in 
the format of my prefered locale, then saved it as an ISO formated date, so 
that numerical sorts are isomorphous to chronological sorting on that field, 
and some other tag displayer could display the date in my locale format 
again. 

And I quite like the way that vorbisgain calculates and stored the replaygain 
values for tracks and albums, and various players can put those numbers to 
use, automatically.

> I actually think all of this tag business has been a mistake --
> comments should be truly free-form.

I disagree - I like being able to see my pick of the artist, title, track 
number and album in my media player. I think the tag=value model is just the 
right level of machine-readable formalization for the task. 

I think the tag debate is one of those eternally recuring threads for these 
reasons:

 - C and C++ people want the metadata to be more 'machine readable' because
 string manipulation requires so much more heavy lifting, and is so fraught
 with peril in those languages.

 - People want more formalization because in software, that's often a good 
 thing, but they forget that this sort of data modeling exercise is
 especially slippery because it's all about people, not software. 

 - People are just plain lazy. They want Xiph to provide the gravatis to
 their pet standard so that some silent, but presumably legion, audience of  
tag editor and player plugin authors will go off and code it for them. 

I think the last time this thread roared across the list I pointed out that 
if the people campaigning for Xiph acceptance of some classical music 
oriented tag set had, instead, spent the time writing a good tag editor that 
enforced their requirements, and perhaps a patched p2p client that did so as 
well, they'd be on their way to a de facto standard already. 

And it hasn't happened. Oh, well.

John
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