[vorbis] Total Tracks Tag?

[Segher Boessenkool]

Haxe wrote:
> On Thu, 2003-10-09, Segher Boessenkool wrote:
> > It's not enforced; it's _recommended_.  And the "standard" tags are
> > only there to help stupid id3-centric players deal with the fact that
> > we are not id3.
> 
> I understand your point, but I think you should see that from a more pragmatic 
> perspective. This is not religion, it is a working system that should make 
> people happy in real life. Let's face some facts:

I am entirely pragmatic about this.  Time and time again I see
people trying to put extra semantics into the tagging system,
that the tagging system is not designed to handle, and _cannot_
in general handle.

Instead of devaluating our current tagging system, let's *please*
create some usable meta-data system if people want that so badly.

> 5.
> Having different apps agree over some tag names is useful. (why else should 
> xiph.org have provided that list of standard tags?).

Yes; it is as useful as id3, i.e. not very much, but it is better
than nothing of course.  You should view the tagging "standard practices"
as a somewhat useful intermediate step, but you _shouldn't_ try to
build a lot of functionality on top of it.

> 6.
> Having different apps agree over some tag names doesn't harm any other app.

It harms *users* of the apps that think some tag means something, while
to the creator of a certain stream it means something totally different,
if those users try to play that stream.

> I understand that your database app is superior to vorbis tags in dealing with 
> metadata. But please do see that there are other people out there. Many 
> people really like to share files, and thus prefer any file that carries 
> information about itself in a way that can instantly be displayed and 
> sorted-by in any existing application.

That is why we need a nice metadata format so badly.  The current tagging
system is just not going to cut it.

> For that reason, the existence of the xiph.org list of "standard" tags is not 
> evil. It is a great benefit for vorbis, and I claim that ogg/vorbis as a file 
> format would be much less successful in real life than it actually is today, 
> if that list of standard tags didn't exist.

As I said, it is a useful intermediate step.

> So why not optimize that list? If many people ask for a certain new tag name, 
> why not add it to the list of "standard" tags?

Because in the end, it will do more harm than good.  We'll end up with
something even more contrived than id3.  Do you really want that?

> There are indeed tag names on 
> the list, that almost noone uses. But i can imagine one ore two other tag 
> names that are still missing on that list, that many other people would 
> certainly appreciate to have, and that would thus increase the number of 
> people that use ogg/vorbis.

No doubt about that.  But please take the longer view, too.

<p>Segher

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