Re: Expanding on my XML ideas

Greg Stein (gstein nospam at lyra.org)
Tue, 09 Mar 1999 12:52:59 -0800

[copying to the cdin nospam at cdin.org mailing list which has a web archive for
future readers]

Matt Sergeant wrote:
>
> Dan Fandrich wrote:
> >
> > > So what would we use as our XML format? That's up for debate I suppose -
> > > but here's what I propose - it fairly closely mirrors the current CDDB
> > > format, only adding extra detail. For those that understand DTD's,
> > > here's one:
> >
> > Greg Stein has already created an XML proposal and posted it at
> > <http://www.cdin.org/specs/cdin.html>.
>
> Can someone in charge of this list please set the Reply-to to the list.
> I really hate having to remember to hit "reply all".

No! The cdindex list is doing that, and it bungs everything up. One
person had their own Reply-To that got overwritten. Also, if you reply
to a mail from *that* list, then it only goes back to that list... it
drops out all the others! Reply-To munging is evil. Somebody already
posted the definitive "Why Reply-To Munging is Harmful" URL. Please
review that.

> That cdin spec missed the artist from each track. And the web site links

Yup. This was mentioned last night. It will go in, along with breaking
out the artist table. Unfortunately, the two mailing lists don't have
archives for new readers. I'm starting to copy stuff to the
cdin nospam at cdin.org mailing list so that this stuff won't keep coming up.

> is open to abuse IMHO. Other than that it's fine. The namespace
> implementation could have been better though...
>
> [snip ID3 tags]
>
> I'd rather see expanded tag names than the shortened 4 character things
> - makes writing parser code a whole lot easier to read. But the tags are
> interesting, but I wouldn't want to take it quite that far: Embedded
> objects and embedded pictures and all that horse poo...

Agreed. Using XML, there isn't any real reason to make these so short. I
think they did it to keep the files small, but that seems like an
arguable goal (given the relative sizes here).

Cheers,
-g

--
Greg Stein, http://www.lyra.org/