Alright. So, the tag proposal that has been labored over for some months has now been reclassified a bit. There new URL is now here: http://reactor-core.org/ogg-tag-recommendations.html And is prefaced by the following statement: "The following recommendations were developed by a community of Ogg/Vorbis users for their own use." I believe the implication is that this document is not, and will not, be endorsed by xiph or the vorbis team. This disturbs me a bit, and think there should be some discussion on the matter. Here are some points which I feel are pertinent. 1) The v-comment.html document (the "Standard") on xiph.org is a suitably weak standard. It was entirely appropriate for the time at which it was published. As I see it, the intent was to develop something which at the outset was clearly superior to id3. This does not preclude development of a more concrete standard. In other words, the plan was to leave the Standard was sparse only until a more complete standard could be devised and reviewed over time, concurrently with the development of ogg vorbis. The Standard was simply a framework on which to build something better. 2) As far as traffic to this list, it seems very little has been decided about a new meta-data format which would supplant comment tags. Let's see - it won't be in XML; that's about all I can recall from the discussion. In other words, it hasn't come along very far. 3) The inadequacy of the id3 system is well-known. In particular, classical music is not given fair treatment. And so, we have id3v2, a conflicting and/or supplemental standard. While id3v1 support is widespread, id3v2 support is still spotty. Some applications which *can* use id3v2 prefer id3v1 when given both! *cough*winamp*cough* It's a mess. 4) The need for a concrete standard is very real. The average user needs to be given clear direction. Hard-core ogg vorbis users have been around; they've tried id3, hated it, and have had excellent ideas about a superior standard. I think that's evidenced by the lively discussions that have deluged the list from time to time. The average GUI, point-and-click user, on the other hand, doesn't have the will or inclination to personally develop a tag standard. It's clear that the questions are not always obvious and the answers are never clear cut - check out the archives, man! The user will want boxes to fill in and a button labelled "Save". 5) In the end, without a definitive standard, ogg tags will likely be left in the hands of GUI developers. Why is this so bad? Well, imagine MusicMatch decides to implement a certain set of tags, and lacking any good external documentation to reference, they develop there own "Ogg Standard" which is published to their web site. Immediately they become a large, influential force in the Ogg Vorbis community. Again, lacking good documentation to reference, P2P developers latch on to MusicMatch's standard as *the* way to tag oggs. :P 6) Developers, being the sticklers that they are, will probably not be comfortable with the Standard. Discerning developers, anyway, who recognize the short-comings of the id3 system. They will want something concrete on which to build code. Not an obscure, idealistic dream. :) 7) The existing Standard, even to the hard-core user, is only useful as a framework developing a personal standard. Those who will make oggs and keep them for themselves might be perfectly satisfied by this situation. But it does nothing to build and support an Ogg Vorbis community. 8) I, as a user, am not interested in an audio format that does not provide a reasonably robust system for identifying music. I have avoided encoding *any classical music at all* to the MP3 format. Instead, I have been holding for Ogg Vorbis. I'm sure there are many others that feel the same. 9) Any concerns about the Proposal as a whole should have have been brought forward *long* ago. Long before so many people have contributed so much time to develop the Proposal with the understanding that it would eventually become the "New Standard". This work has been conducted in public on the vorbis list, and always with the overriding goal of developing something which benefits the Ogg Vorbis community as a whole. 10) Overall, I feel the Proposal is nothing but beneficial to users, developers, xiph, the entire Ogg Vorbis community, the Open Source community, humanity, etc. I haven't seen any concrete contrary arguments. In all honesty, I'd love to see them. I'm always up for a little debate. ;) Finally, I need to clarify that this is *not* a rant against Jonathan Walther. As I understand the situation, the changes were made in response to pressure from others within the community. I sincerely hope these individuals will engage in this discussion, as well. -- -:-:- David K. Gasaway -:-:- XNS : =David K Gasaway -:-:- Email: dave@gasaway.org -:-:- Web : dave.gasaway.org <p>--- >8 ---- List archives: http://www.xiph.org/archives/ Ogg project homepage: http://www.xiph.org/ogg/ To unsubscribe from this list, send a message to 'vorbis-request@xiph.org' containing only the word 'unsubscribe' in the body. No subject is needed. Unsubscribe messages sent to the list will be ignored/filtered.
"David K. Gasaway" wrote:> > Alright. So, the tag proposal that has been labored over for some > months has now been reclassified a bit. There new URL is now here: > > http://reactor-core.org/ogg-tag-recommendations.html > > And is prefaced by the following statement: > > "The following recommendations were developed by a community of > Ogg/Vorbis users for their own use."So far, so good.> I believe the implication is that this document is not, and will not, > be endorsed by xiph or the vorbis team. This disturbs me a bit, and > think there should be some discussion on the matter. Here are some > points which I feel are pertinent. > > 1) The v-comment.html document (the "Standard") on xiph.org is a > suitably weak standard. It was entirely appropriate for the time at > which it was published. As I see it, the intent was to develop > something which at the outset was clearly superior to id3. This does > not preclude development of a more concrete standard. In other words, > the plan was to leave the Standard was sparse only until a more > complete standard could be devised and reviewed over time, concurrently > with the development of ogg vorbis. The Standard was simply a > framework on which to build something better.No. The Vorbis comments have one goal: provide human-readable comments. Quoting from the standard: td> The comment field is meant to be used much like someone jotting a std> quick note on the bottom of a CDR. The standard fullfills that goal perfectly.> 2) As far as traffic to this list, it seems very little has been > decided about a new meta-data format which would supplant comment tags. > Let's see - it won't be in XML; that's about all I can recall from the > discussion. In other words, it hasn't come along very far.Then maybe you should focus on working on it?> 3) The inadequacy of the id3 system is well-known. In particular, > classical music is not given fair treatment. And so, we have id3v2, a > conflicting and/or supplemental standard. While id3v1 support is > widespread, id3v2 support is still spotty. Some applications which > *can* use id3v2 prefer id3v1 when given both! *cough*winamp*cough* > It's a mess.How is this relevant to us?> 4) The need for a concrete standard is very real. The average user > needs to be given clear direction. Hard-core ogg vorbis users have > been around; they've tried id3, hated it, and have had excellent ideas > about a superior standard. I think that's evidenced by the lively > discussions that have deluged the list from time to time. > > The average GUI, point-and-click user, on the other hand, doesn't have > the will or inclination to personally develop a tag standard. It's > clear that the questions are not always obvious and the answers are > never clear cut - check out the archives, man! The user will want > boxes to fill in and a button labelled "Save".Let them type anything they want -- because they want just that.> 5) In the end, without a definitive standard, ogg tags will likely be > left in the hands of GUI developers. Why is this so bad? Well, > imagine MusicMatch decides to implement a certain set of tags, and > lacking any good external documentation to reference, they develop > there own "Ogg Standard" which is published to their web site. > Immediately they become a large, influential force in the Ogg Vorbis > community. Again, lacking good documentation to reference, P2P > developers latch on to MusicMatch's standard as *the* way to tag oggs. > :PAny program that doesn't show *all* tags is not compliant. If a program restricts the user in what tags he can input, users will not like it.> 6) Developers, being the sticklers that they are, will probably not be > comfortable with the Standard. Discerning developers, anyway, who > recognize the short-comings of the id3 system. They will want > something concrete on which to build code. Not an obscure, idealistic > dream. :)Erm, are you bashing the proposal now, or the standard?> 7) The existing Standard, even to the hard-core user, is only useful as > a framework developing a personal standard. Those who will make oggs > and keep them for themselves might be perfectly satisfied by this > situation. But it does nothing to build and support an Ogg Vorbis > community.Please explain.> 8) I, as a user, am not interested in an audio format that does not > provide a reasonably robust system for identifying music. I have > avoided encoding *any classical music at all* to the MP3 format. > Instead, I have been holding for Ogg Vorbis. I'm sure there are many > others that feel the same.If you have a Vorbis file, looking at the comment field will show you what it is. If, on the other hand, you want to search for a certain file, you should use some library program. A database like that restricts the user in what data (what tags) it can hold, but for a good reason: to make precise searches possible. The comment field does not need any restrictions like that.> 9) Any concerns about the Proposal as a whole should have have been > brought forward *long* ago. Long before so many people have > contributed so much time to develop the Proposal with the understanding > that it would eventually become the "New Standard". This work has been > conducted in public on the vorbis list, and always with the overriding > goal of developing something which benefits the Ogg Vorbis community as > a whole.a) We didn't invite any of that discussion b) Concerns _have_ been brought forward, they just have been ignored. http://www.xiph.org/archives/vorbis/200112/0083.html (me) http://www.xiph.org/archives/vorbis/200112/0401.html (Rillian) http://www.xiph.org/archives/vorbis/200112/0162.html (Monty) http://www.xiph.org/archives/vorbis/200112/0138.html (Monty) and many many more.> 10) Overall, I feel the Proposal is nothing but beneficial to users, > developers, xiph, the entire Ogg Vorbis community, the Open Source > community, humanity, etc. I haven't seen any concrete contrary > arguments. In all honesty, I'd love to see them. I'm always up for a > little debate. ;)I feel it harms users and developers. Simpler and more general is easier and more powerful. Standardizing "ARTIST", "TRACKNUMBER" etc. is good for easy adoption of Vorbis in older software that is id3 or CDDB-centric. There is no need to standardize any other tag. <p>And now, back to your regular scheduled program... <p><p>Segher <p>--- >8 ---- List archives: http://www.xiph.org/archives/ Ogg project homepage: http://www.xiph.org/ogg/ To unsubscribe from this list, send a message to 'vorbis-request@xiph.org' containing only the word 'unsubscribe' in the body. No subject is needed. Unsubscribe messages sent to the list will be ignored/filtered.
"David K. Gasaway" wrote:> widespread, id3v2 support is still spotty. Some applications which > *can* use id3v2 prefer id3v1 when given both! *cough*winamp*cough*My Winamp prefers v2. <p>Moritz --- >8 ---- List archives: http://www.xiph.org/archives/ Ogg project homepage: http://www.xiph.org/ogg/ To unsubscribe from this list, send a message to 'vorbis-request@xiph.org' containing only the word 'unsubscribe' in the body. No subject is needed. Unsubscribe messages sent to the list will be ignored/filtered.
Sander Sweers [mailto:infirit@xs4all.nl] banged on the keyboard to say:> My winamp only plays vorbis files! :P The question is, does it show > you what you want to know. My opinion is that a tag only needs to > report basics, track nr, album, artist and comment. Who needs more ?? > I know that the id3v1 had some limitations on how many characters > you could store, but was fixed with id3v2. > > Greetz SanderUggh, id3v1 was an evil kludge, id3v2 was NOT a fix. It is simply a larger, uglier, messier kludge to compensate for kludgev1 limits. id3 is EVIL. Do not look to any of its versions as a solution, rather, recognise it for its only redeeming feature - it was an inspiration to create the sensible, extensible tagging system in OGG. Myles --- >8 ---- List archives: http://www.xiph.org/archives/ Ogg project homepage: http://www.xiph.org/ogg/ To unsubscribe from this list, send a message to 'vorbis-request@xiph.org' containing only the word 'unsubscribe' in the body. No subject is needed. Unsubscribe messages sent to the list will be ignored/filtered.
First of all I must say that I find it amusing that this subject can cause so much traffic on this mailing list. I wonder why...? Next I will add some to this traffic: In some ways the vorbis style of storing tags is good. 1. International character encoding 2. very flexible size But there are some items that seems like bad design to me: 1. Tag is located at the beginning of files 2. Multiple files with same name is permitted and even encouraged 1) Having the tag at the beginning makes changing of the tag difficult - the whole file has to be rewritten. When streaming it is necessary to send the tag before the actual content, but this is not really a convincing argument to locate the tag at the beginning also when the file is statically stored. At least, if the tag is at the beginning padding should be possible and encouraged (a la id3v2). I think it is possible to pad vorbis comments, but it is obviously not encouraged (since it is neither mentioned anywhere nor implemented) 2) I can't see any reason for having multiple fields with the same name. The example: ARTIST=Dizzy Gillespie ARTIST=Sonny Rollins ARTIST=Sonny Stitt is nothing I would be "jotting [as?] a quick note on the bottom of a CDR". Personally I would write "Performers: Dizzy Gillespie, Sonny Rollins and Sonny Stitt" - I would never repeat the word "performer" three times. For those who dont like "," as separator, there are several other to choose from in the character set, e.g.: CR, LF, CR+LF, FF, LSep, PSep etc... What is the purpose of having multiple fields with the same name? <p>Regards, Erik <p>--- >8 ---- List archives: http://www.xiph.org/archives/ Ogg project homepage: http://www.xiph.org/ogg/ To unsubscribe from this list, send a message to 'vorbis-request@xiph.org' containing only the word 'unsubscribe' in the body. No subject is needed. Unsubscribe messages sent to the list will be ignored/filtered.