Vorbis - Jun 2004 - If you're against .ogv, don't bother even reading this. Was (Re:

[Vorbis] Extension proposal - partly serious)
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.44.0406201942590.21207-100000@sasami.anime.net>
References: <Pine.LNX.4.44.0406201942590.21207-100000@sasami.anime.net>
Message-ID: <40D70E0E.5090807@ellisfoundation.com>

>Anyone else want to take this discussion to another mailing list? We can
>hash out a standard there without interference from the people here who
>just dont 'get it'.
>
>-Dan
>
>
I think we should take this to some hobbyist audio forum like at
hydrogen.  Nothing is going to happen here, the people who oppose the
one needed extension of .ogv do not care about the interests of us, and
especially do not care about the interests of the very average user.
You know the people that actually might buy music online from a site
using Vorbis, that could actually drop some money into Xiph.  The point
is, an dev has tuned us out, they've heard this one too many times, and
don't give a damn anymore.  I can understand, but I would think they
would be concerned about all there work ending up not reaching the full
potential it could.  There is more to a program than code, it's a product.

John Morton wrote:
>The funny old thing about the notion of a file type is that it tends to be
>related to things what you use the data in the file for, or what sort of
>program you need to make the file do something useful.
>
Really excellent point, worth noting.
>But we do. My text files aren't all called .txt - quite a few of the
>are .py, .c, .h and so on. I certainly don't name them after the
container
>type; I've got no files with extensions like .7bit-ascii or .utf8. That
would
>be daft.
>
>
This should be a point that devs should understand.  Do you know how
much of a mess it would be if every bit of source code had the same
extension.  And I'm not just talking .c .h or .py, what about PHP, and
Java, even HTML documents.  They are all just text documents.  I guess
some devs could be so hardcore they'd use emacs for all of it, so maybe
they wouldn't care, but I'd be they would.  Needless to say it'd be
hard
to find anything.

Cameron Patrick wrote:
>Programmes that attempt to cater to both are almost universally bad at
>one or the other.  Sure, they might use the same library to decode all
>kinds of Ogg media, but that's just an implementation detail to
me-the-user.
>
>
>
This is the real reason that this is a problem.  I don't know of a video
player that is a great music player.  It doesn't exist.  I use Winamp
for music (I know it does Video but not well), and Media Player Classic
for Video.  On Linux I use XMMS and Mplayer.  They entail an entirely
different user-interface, as such one that can do both must make
compromises somewhere.


Anyway, lets move this somewhere else.  Nobody who could make a
difference about this gives a damn after the flame war that has been
going on.  Since I started this thread I'm sorry if we've been a
nuisance, but this is an important issue that can't be swept under the
rug.  With the Theora bitstream freeze we are heading into trouble.
Just as when Vorbis was release and .ogg just became Vorbis audio files,
.ogg will become I don't know what the hell it is.  People will complain
Vorbis doesn't even work because they tried to play some file they
downloaded in Winamp and it wouldn't play it, because it was a Theora
file, but they don't know that.

I really need to stop.  I'm just starting to rant.  Let's take this
somewhere else.  If it is going to take people to make the standard
extension maybe we should branch out of our little Vorbis mailing list
world.  Go to Hydrogen Audio, go to /., I even think people at
OSNews.com would be interested in this.  The Helix community might have
some interest also.  I talked to a friend about this recently that has
had his own indie record label for about 8 years now and he even he
thinks it is totally ridiculous.  I do web design and php and have my
own hosting (although if I got ./'ed I'd be screwed) so maybe we should
make an advocacy page.

I don't want to get into flame wars with people I don't even know, we
won't get anywhere with this.  We need to talk to the 99%, not the 1%
that would rather right some Python program to sort their files.

Paul Ellis