[vorbis] Ogg Traffic for March 18, 2003

[Carsten Haese]

Hi everybody:

It's time for another weekly update from the Xiph.org team. The plain
text version is below, and the HTML version will appear on vorbis.com
later today.

Enjoy!

<p>Ogg Traffic for Tuesday, March 18, 2003

[1]Carsten "Purple" Haese

   March 18, 2003
     _________________________________________________________________

   Table of Contents

   1. Editorial

        1.1. It's Ogg, not OGG!

   2. Status Updates

        2.1. Monty
        2.2. Michael Smith, Brendan Cully, Karl Heyes
        2.3. Jean-Marc Valin
        2.4. Stan Seibert

   3. Interesting Discussions

        3.1. Vorbis Decoder from Scratch

   4. Recent Developments

        4.1. Asterisk PBX supports Speex
        4.2. Speex heading for the RFC Track
        4.3. WinAmp needs You!

   [2]Previous Issues of Ogg Traffic

1. Editorial

1.1. It's Ogg, not OGG!

   With  an  ever-increasing  adoption  of  Ogg  Vorbis,  I'm  seeing  an
   increasing  number  of  new  users refer to it as OGG. This is a trend
   that  I  would  like  to  counter  with  this  piece  of authoritative
   information:  It's  not  OGG, it is Ogg! You may think that this is an
   insignificant  difference, but I don't think so. Please let me explain
   why.

   Writing  OGG  in  a context where both uppercase and lowercase letters
   are  used  implies  that it is an acronym like our good old competitor
   Em-Pee-Three.  I  haven't  heard anybody try to pronounce OGG, but I'm
   willing to bet that there are people that are tempted to read it as an
   acronym  and  hence  pronounce  it Oh-Gee-Gee, which is not right. The
   format's  name  is  Ogg.  It  is  a  word,  not  an  acronym, and it's
   pronounced  like Dog without the letter D. If you're not familiar with
   the  word  or  why  it  is  a  fitting  name  for an audio compression
   algorithm, please see the OggSquish section on [3]this page.

   If  you respect Ogg Vorbis for the amazing piece of technology that it
   is, please respect its creator, Monty, and call it by the name that he
   chose for it, and spread the word: It's Ogg, not OGG!

   Thanks for listening. We now return to our regular scheduled program.

2. Status Updates

2.1. Monty

   Monty  corrected  some  typos in the Vorbis decoder specification that
   John   Ripley   found.   He  also  committed  more  optimizations  and
   improvements to libogg2.

2.2. Michael Smith, Brendan Cully, Karl Heyes

   The  icecast/ices/libshout  development team is still on a roll and is
   committing patches like crazy. This week, we've seen lots of bugfixes,
   code cleanups, and attempts to get a sane autotools system to work.

2.3. Jean-Marc Valin

   In  preparation  for Speex 1.0, which is due to be released very soon,
   Jean-Marc  has  made  some  documentation  fixes  and eliminated a few
   compiler warnings.

2.4. Stan Seibert

   Stan,  author  of the Positron sync manager for the [4]Neuros Digital
   Audio  Computer,  has now received his demo unit, which allowed him to
   get  some  hands-on  experience  with  the Neuros and to gain intimate
   knowledge of its software innards.

3. Interesting Discussions

3.1. Vorbis Decoder from Scratch

   John  Ripley  informs  us in [5]this message that he has succeeded in
   implementing  a  Vorbis decoder from scratch, using almost exclusively
   the pseudocode specifications, and only resorting to libvorbis code in
   certain  parts  where  the  specifications contained too many typos to
   produce a working implementation.

   With  this  effort,  John  provided  a  valuable service to the Vorbis
   community  by  validating large parts of the specification as correct,
   and  by pointing out where the specification contains errors that need
   to  be  corrected.  Having correct decoder specifications is essential
   for  a  codec, and thanks to John's efforts, the Vorbis specs are that
   much closer to being 100% correct.

4. Recent Developments

4.1. Asterisk PBX supports Speex

   Ross  Finlayson  informs  us in [6]this message that the software PBX
   [7]Asterisk  has  recently  accepted  his  patches to support dynamic
   payload types, and as a consequence, Asterisk's SIP implementation now
   supports Speex!

4.2. Speex heading for the RFC Track

   Greg  Herlein,  main author of the Speex RTP profile draft [8]reports
   in   this   message  that  he  will  present  his  draft  for  initial
   consideration  at  the  next meeting of the IETF's AV Working Group on
   March  20th.  We wish him the best of luck, and, as always, we'll keep
   you informed of future developments.

4.3. WinAmp needs You!

   Nullsoft,  the  makers  of Winamp, have agreed to let Xiph.org work on
   Ogg  support  in  the  new version of Winamp. Unfortunately, we're all
   really  busy,  so  we need help. If you think you are the right person
   for   the   job,   please   don't   hesitate  and  contact  Emmett  at
   [9]emmett at xiph.org.

References

   1. mailto:carsten at xiph.org
   2. http://www.vorbis.com/ot/
   3. http://www.xiph.org/xiphname.html
   4. http://www.neurosaudio.com/
   5. http://www.xiph.org/archives/vorbis-dev/200303/0016.html
   6. http://www.xiph.org/archives/speex-dev/200303/0007.html
   7. http://www.asterisk.org/
   8. http://www.xiph.org/archives/speex-dev/200303/0006.html
   9. mailto:emmett at xiph.org

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