On Sat, 23 Oct 1999, Mayhem & Chaos Coordinator wrote:
> Perfect -- I'll get it taken care of before we release 2.0 on November 15th.
Great! The day after my birthday. What a nice present!
>
> That was one of the reasons, but more importantly I tried to run the id3v2
> code on linux about a year ago with dismal results. Just before I wrote the
> cheese-ass-let's-read-only-the-most-crucial-T-tags-id3v2-read-only
> implementation I checked the website for an update and was pointed to
> MusicMatch, where I could find no mention of an updated library. We would
> very much like to have full read/write ID3v2 capabilities in FreeAmp, and if
> you can provide us with a comprehensive library that runs under Linux I'd be
> more than glad to incorporate it into FreeAmp. Any chances of this happening
> in the next week? :-)
Not a chance. :( I've only started hacking at the code, and from what I see
so far it isn't terribly well implemented. For example, rather than setting
the data members in its classes private, it leaves them public and has the
following comment:
// *** PRIVATE INTERNAL DATA - DO NOT USE *** PRIVATE INTERNAL DATA - DO NOT USE ***
Why they wouldn't declare them private is beyond me. Plus I want to use
automake & autoconf so that it'll compile nicely into a shared lib, but my
experience with those tools is slim, so I'm learning that as well. Finally,
I'm having to come up with unusual tactics to gain access to my computer, as my
wife has started learning the wonders of the gimp and staroffice.
So, in short, hopefully within the next couple weeks, but certainly not bythis
week.
>
> <soapbox><brutalhonesty>
>
> Do you have a vested interest in ID3v2? Personally, I cannot stand ID3v2.
> Its obfuscated, too complicated and it tries to save every last possible bit
> of space at the expense of ease of implemtation. (I have written a complete
> ID3v2 library in Perl, so I *know*)
>
I have no vested interest, other than I have many songs with id3v2 tags. I
wanted a tagging system that isn't bound by the ridiculous limitations of
id3v1, and id3v2 seemed like the obvious choice. The only other tagging system
that I know of (besides lyric tags) is musicmatch's original tagging format,
before they assumed control of id3v2 (the free downloads at musicmatch.com is
where I first experienced the joys of mp3 music, many moons ago). I've actually
been trying to reverse-engineer the format for this format, and possibly coming
up with a library for easily parsing that info as well. The format is no
work of art, but it does have some benefits over id3v2: the tag as a whole can
vary in size, it comes at the end of the file, and is reasonably easy to parse.
In many ways its like an id3v1 tag with variable sized fields and more of
them. Since musicmatch never made the specs for this format public, my
knowledge of their system isn't complete, but it is about 95%.
> We could do this much easier with XML. It could be much more powerful and
> the only ID3v2 code we would have to write it code to translate the existing
> tags to the XML format. I've even got a rough draft of a proposed
> replacement for ID3v2 using XML. I really think it would be worth it for us
> to consider doing this. We can have all the features of ID3v2 and a ton more
> with a lot of flexibility, with much less code to write. A good standards
> document (RFC?) and a bare minimum of code and an XML parser. (And half a
> tank of gas....)
Isn't it "A full tank of gas, a half a pack of cigarettes..."? Or did I assume
the wrong allusion?
>
> Anyone interested?
I'm very interested. I know little of XML, but it doesn't look all that
difficult to learn. If you could make your tagging proposal available online,
I'd love to look at it.
>
> </brutalhonesty></soapbox>
>
> --ruaok Freezerburn! All else is only icing. -- Soul Coughing
>
> Robert Kaye -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://moon.eorbit.net/~robert
