[vorbis] Time for Vorbis File 1.1? (was Vorbis Comment question)

[Carsten Haese]

On Wed, 2003-03-05 at 13:28, David K. Gasaway wrote:
> Alejandro G. Belluscio wrote:
> 
> >   That's because VorbisComment is not used for that. Is for some
> > "scratch over the CD" info. 
> 
> I'm hoping to get some information on why the tags can't / shouldn't be 
> extended beyond their original purpose.

My guesses are:
1) Because Monty says so.
2) To make backwards compatibility with older players and forward
compatibility with newer players easier.

Keep in mind that tags are ultimately designed to be displayed verbatim
to the user. If you have arbitrary (possibly binary) metadata stored in
a tag, you have to know which tags are being (ab-)used for this, and
strip them away before sending the file to an older player that doesn't
know about these Extra Special Metadata Tags.

On the other hand, if the metadata are stored in separate logical
streams alongside the Vorbis stream, all you have to do is to extract
the Vorbis stream(s) from a file, and you're done. (And this is only
necessary for older players that expect degenerate Vorbis files. Newer
players will probably just ignore streams they don't understand.)

Hope this helps,

Carsten Haese.

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