[vorbis] Total Tracks Tag?

[Tom Felker]

On Wednesday 08 October 2003 6:46 am, Segher Boessenkool wrote:
> Daniel Schregenberger wrote:
> > Segher Boessenkool wrote:
> > > nils wrote:
> > > > I believe there is a need for a standard vorbis comment
> > > > field to encode "Total Number of Tracks (on a CD)".
> > >
> > > Why not just say
> > >
> > >	TRACKNUMBER=4 of 8
> > > or
> > >	TRACKNUMBER=4th of 8 total
> > > or
> > >	TRACKNUMBER=The fourth part of eight.
> > > or even
> > >	TRACKNUMBER=Almost halfway.
> >
> > Not everybody is talking english...maybe use an "international" version
> > like
> >
> > TRACKNUMBER=4/8
>
> Oh, I don't speak english either, so I'll just use
>
> 	TRACKNUMBER=driehonderdvierentachtig van vierhonderdzeventien
>
> Tags are short comments, scribbled on the Vorbis stream by whoever
> created that stream.  They are not parsable, and they might not be
> readable by anyone else than who wrote it in the first place.

If comments were simply "what you'd scribble on a CD-R," they'd be completely 
freeform text, or perhaps even an image.  But instead, one level of 
parsability is enforced: key=value.  The way I see it, this is to help 
players decide what information to show the user - I personally like to see 
"$ALBUM - ARTIST - $TRACKNUMBER.  $TITLE".  I want the player to hide 
ENCODER, YEAR, and TRACKCOUNT.  From the perspective of an XMMS user (and an 
outsider to Vorbis), this selective display is important.

My preference, like most people's, is not to see the track total in the 
playlist.  On the other hand, I sometimes want to know how many tracks an 
album has, primarily for organizational purposes.  (Sometimes albums of the 
same name will differ only in tracknumber.)

As I see it, there are two ways to include the track count, but hide it in 
everyday use.  The first is to store "TRACKNUMBER=3 of 10" (or similar), and 
to parse it on display (atoi() is sufficient).  I agree that this is evil.  
The alternative is to have two seperate tags.

I fear that if the guidelines say "TRACKNUMBER=3 of 10", then players will 
simply parse (XMMS does to atoi() on this), or even worse, make a complex 
parser to extract not only the tracknumber but also the track total.  And 
now, the guidelines say nothing, the rippers and players don't agree between 
TRACKTOTAL and TOTALTRACKS, and the software doesn't work well together.

What's the problem with just choosing one and putting it in the guidelines, so 
that the software can interoperate?

Have fun,

-- 
Tom Felker, <tcfelker at mtco.com>
<http://vlevel.sourceforge.net> - Stop fiddling with the volume knob.

Verbing weirds language. 
 -- Calvin, Bill Watterson

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