File date order [LWN.net]

File date order

Posted Jan 9, 2007 12:50 UTC (Tue) by k8to (subscriber, #15413)
In reply to: File date order by svena
Parent article: Review: Exaile Media Player (Linux.com)

This just says that easytag still uses id3v2.3.

Considering that id3v2.4 does not gracefuly degrade, I don't see much reason to use id3v2.4 _ever_, especially since there are no convenient command line tools for scripting manipulation of your files from metadata which will be able to understand your id3v2.4-tagged files. Not to mention there is a large body of mp3 playing software which does not understand id3v2.4.

I use exfalso for all my flac and vorbis tagging needs, but I have to fall back to really clunky programs for mp3s for compatability. This is really an indictment of the clowns who "manage" the id3 format through all its many binary incompatable changes which never seem to get around to improving it to not need them in the future. One of the many reasons I avoid mp3 when possible.

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File date order

Posted Jan 10, 2007 1:32 UTC (Wed) by piman (subscriber, #8957) [Link]

Well, by that logic, since id3v2.3 doesn't gracefully degrade and id3v2.2 doesn't gracefully degrade, we should just not use ID3 beyond ID3v1.1. While in theory I agree with that :), I'd rather see pervasive ID3v2.4 support everywhere -- in general it's a much saner standard, and it supports UTF-8.

It's not that hard to write code that can read ID3v2.3 and ID3v2.4, especially to the extent EasyTag cares about (not much).

'mid3v2', included with Mutagen (which is required by Ex Falso), is a command-line-compatible clone of the 'id3v2' tool that id3lib has. I'm not sure it's "convenient" since 'id3v2' is not a great interface, but I suspect that's what you're referring to.

File date order

Posted Jan 12, 2007 3:48 UTC (Fri) by k8to (subscriber, #15413) [Link]

Yes, all the backwards incompatabilities of id3 are a big joke, but all the software on my system is capable of handling id3v2.3 (which is a really large amount), and only 2 programs handle id3v2.4.

Thus, the value of id3v2.4, due to network effects, is really low.