[Vorbis] .ogg extension and Theora

[Jon Shiring]

<20040617194522.GA17559 at xiph.org>
Message-ID: <40D2070D.7020707 at slothy.com>

Subtitles on a song with no video?  To me that just seems like a silly
example.

See, here's the problem with this debate: there definitely IS a gray
area about it, so pointing out that there are edge cases doesn't
invalidate the argument.  "It's too hard to do right" should not be an
excuse.  I suspect that if people start doing crazy things like
subtitles on an audio track that people will probably still only care
that it's an audio track and name it that (for instance if someone has
the subtitle data in the id3v2 tag and this becomes commonplace, people
will still call them .mp3 files).  Don't worry about what to name each
file, just define something to say when it's audio and when it's video
and let the users figure out which slot to put their files in.

Sorting a directory of files based on their file type is pretty freaking
essential.  Just because 1% of users use an OS that can do that without
changing the extension doesn't mean that's the best choice.  Why bother
making a Winamp plugin if nobody cares about making Ogg Vorbis
successful for the masses?  This is just a continuation of that.

I think you can point to the fact that .ogm has already been successful
for videos as proof that Windows people want this.  You might not - hey,
maybe the linux filesharing apps can automatically remap the filename so
you don't have to stoop so low.

Either there needs to be a push for "We need to try to make this as
successful as possible, even if we have to compromise our lofty techie
ideals", or someone needs to say "success be damned, it would hurt my
feelings to have two file extensions for the same container format!"

Maybe we could turn the argument around a little, because I have to
admit that I don't really understand the all-.ogg viewpoint yet.  What
is the net loss for having two file extensions for the same container
format?  For example, how would things be worse if divx had decided to
call it .divx instead of .avi?  Obviously they did it like that to
piggyback on the native support for avi, but ignoring that (since .ogg
and .ogm both universally have almost no native OS support), what would
be the negative aspects of this?

Jon

Arc Riley wrote:

>And who draws the line between "audio" and "audio+subtitles"?  What
>about "audio of a brand new codec which I cant decode"?  What if your
>favorite media player only supports Vorbis, but you have a Ogg FLAC file
>which is supported by a media player which you like less, and want it to
>open in a media player which you most like?
>
>The problem cannot be solved in the extension.  Your OS is the problem,
>or prehaps just your file manager.  If you /want/ different icons and
>different programs to open files depending on the file's _content_, not
>just it's _type_, then you need something more advanced to fill this niche.
>
>Ogg is the file format.  Wanting different extensions depending on it's
>content is like wanting different text file extensions depending on if
>the content is personal or work related, etc.
>
>