[Vorbis] .ogg extension and Theora

[Haxe]

<000401c454a9$355dea50$05649c3f at computername>
<20040617231837.GM23020 at griffon>
Message-ID: <200406180241.39823.haxe at pansensack.de>

> Being able to tell how to deal with a file, in a qualititave way, by
> its name, is _fundamental_ to how people interact with computers.

Completely correct. This is an important fact.

> But what we _don't_ need is for Xiph to get involved in this issue
> (at least not at this time).  This is between the users and the
> application developers.  A standard is going to emerge -- either
> *.ogm or *.ogv, would be my guess.  When that standard finally
> settles down, then Xiph can advocate it, make the reference encoder
> generate it, and so on.

Yes, a standard extension for ogg video definitely _will_ arise, and it
certainly won't be *.ogg,  no matter if the Xiph people like that or
not. That said, it should be Xiph people to choose a standard extension
in advance, and propagate it as the default extension NOW. That would
save some time of confusion.

I personally would prefer *.ogv (not *ogt or again *ogm), but that's
indeed not important. It is only important that it differs from *ogg
and from other extensions that are not likely to be opened with a video
player application.

To all you Xiph people who may have influence on that:
This is really a very important and necessary discussion. Making a good
decision about the filename extension of ogg files containing "mainly
video" will have a huge effect on how many people will use ogg video.
Please propagate a special filename extension (other that ogg) now,
before other people will do (and thus cause even more confusion).
If not, this could one day be considered a big historical mistake.

Some footnotes:

> Is there still any great reason to require just three letter
> extensions? Probably not too many DOS, Win3 or Win95 users around
> anymore. ?Any OS or app problems? ?Maybe, because people have
> habbitually used 3 letters for a long time.

No. Today, more than three letters are perfectly fine. But I think it's
not necessary. *.ogv would serve well.

> file.theora.ogg ...
> file.vorbis.ogg ...

This is indeed a common scheme to name files that can carry varying
types of content. I have seen many files named somevideo.divx.avi,
obviously to indicate the used codec. But for the _big_ distinctions
that more than 95% of the users feel to be important (because they use
different applications for the different types), like the distinction
between "mainly audio" vs. "mainly video", there will always be a
top-level distinction between the filename extensions. There is a
reason why *.mp3 is called *.mp3 and not *.audio3.mpg

Hauke Hachmann