From: Noah Smith <midblue_at_carolina.rr.com>
Date: Wed, 7 Apr 2004 16:06:11 -0400

"Fred Maxwell" <rockbox_at_anti-spam.org> wroted:
> Magnus Holmgren wrote:
> > I don't know if it is superior, but it is simpler and more flexible. A
bit
> > like Vorbis tags, if you're familiar with them.
> >
> > What you have is a list of tags, with a name and a value (a=b), and
you're
> > free to use whatever name you want (within a limited charset). The data
> > can be plain text (UTF-8 encoded) or binary data (so you can store
images
> > if you really, really want to). Of course, for this to be useful, there
> > need to be some standard names, but a user can add any extra fields they
> > want.
>
> This kind of "flexibility" is the last thing that MP3 files need. I
> don't want everyone and their brother creating new tags. I don't want
> to have to strip out weird tags from every file that someone gives me.
> I don't want to find out that some kid downloaded a song on Kazaa and
> then found a tag that contained an image of some deviant sex act. I
> don't want tags that can store executable code - because you know
> someone will use it for that and the "cool video" in the tag will turn
> out to be yet another worm/virus.

    In the tag specification link I had in the original post, you'll see
that the people encouraging the use of APEv2 agree with you.

"Size should be normally in the range of 1 KByte, NEVER more than 8 KByte.
Larger external data should be stored externally using link entries.
External data is much easier to process by normal programs, so there's no
need to insert JPEG data to audio data. Especially storing album related
information in audio tracks is stupid."
http://www.personal.uni-jena.de/~pfk/mpp/sv8/apetag.html

<snip>
> The only real flaw with ID3V1.1 tags is their limited lengths. Double
> the lengths for artist, album, and song name and that would be fine. I
> don't need to have pictures of the artist, pictures of the album cover,
> song titles in Mandarin Chinese, Bengali, Dongxiang, and Telugu, or
> binary data of any type.
 I also agree with you on these last comment. ID3v1 tags are pretty good to
me as well, except when I need more character length. The album covers,
lyrics, multiple character sets, etc have already happened with ID3v2
tagging though. If anything, APEv2 tags would be something to head towards
the opposite of that.

-- 
Noah
.Charter Member of The League For Claiming Membership
.In Your Sigs For Groups That Are Really Just For
.Claiming Membership In Your Sig
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Received on 2004-04-07