Why is Fedora a multimedia disaster? - Here is why.

Mikkel L. Ellertson mikkel at infinity-ltd.com
Tue Apr 17 18:48:12 UTC 2007


Valent Turkovic wrote:
> On 4/17/07, Michael Wiktowy <michael.wiktowy at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> ogg is just the container format. It is able to contain both video
>> (mainly theora codec) and audio (mainly vorbis codec). It is pretty
>> flexible.
>>
>> /Mike
> 
> Ok, I know that already. And if I was a "newbie" i probably wouldn't
> even know how to find this mailing list.
> 
> My point is how would you answer to this question to your
> wife/girlfriend or brother/sister or even mother/father? That is the
> base or my question! And there is no answer that is good enough
> because there should be a CLEAR distinction in extension for ogg video
> and audio files IMHO.
> 
I guess I am missing something here - why would you be trying to
explain file extensions to them in the first place? Would they be
reading the file extension, or looking at the file icon to tell them
what the file is?

In any case, why does there need to be a clear distinction in the
extension? You are talking A/V files... This is not the only case
where a file with the same extension may be audio, video, or both.
At lease it isn't as bad as when Real Audio decided to adopt the
.rpm extension for their audio files after it was already in use by
RPM...

One other thing to keep in mind is that few file types in Linux are
tied to their extension. While it is nice to have an extension that
indicates the file type, there are too many file types that share
the same extension. This is where mime types comes into play. Take a
look at /etc/mime-magic for an idea of how it works. If a program is
relying on the extension instead of the mime type to tell what a
file is, then the programmer didn't do his/her/its job correctly. (I
can see using the extension as a shortcut in deciding what types to
check firs, but don't depend on it.)

Mikkel
-- 

  Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons,
for thou art crunchy and taste good with Ketchup!




More information about the users mailing list