Fwd: ATF: Stop spreading FUD about other media players

[Jeff Mitchell]

Here's an absolutely hilarious email from some guy who is in love with Quod 
Libet and who clearly has no clue what ATF actually does.  I put some 
responses below since he indirectly makes some good points, although I don't 
think I'll waste my time forwarding them to him and having to deal with 
moronic responses.  I love his footnotes.

----------  Forwarded Message  ----------

Subject: ATF: Stop spreading FUD about other media players
Date: Thursday 20 July 2006 21:26
From: Joe Wreschnig <piman at sacredchao.net>
To: kde-dev at emailgoeshere.com
Cc: Quod Libet list <quodlibet at lists.sacredchao.net>

I read
http://amarok.kde.org/amarokwiki/index.php/Advanced_Tag_Features_(ATF) a
few weeks ago when it came up on the TagLib list and didn't really think
much of it, since there's no useful information there.

I read it again today, and it says

  Great! Which media players have this type of functionality?
    Amarok.


  ...which ones don't?
    iTunes, Winamp, XMMS, Banshee, Rhythmbox, JuK, Winamp, Foobar,
    MusicMatch, Quod Libet, LSongs..."

Now, please improve Amarok if you like it. I have no problem with that;
improved software benefits everyone.

However,

1) Quod Libet has been saving ratings and play counts - the library data
people care about - in Ogg, FLAC, and MP3 files since September 2005.[0]
We've also done it in a cross-library fashion, storing the data in the
files themselves, either using the metadata designed for it (POPM in
MP3) or custom, documented, easily-parsable values.[1] So, frankly,
you're lying, and went out of your way specifically to lie about QL.[2]

2) For all your hype and excitement, it would be really nice if you
could document how to access that functionality, so other players
*could* support it. Right now it's somewhere between "vague" and
"worthless".

3) Your proposal, while it might be useful, has nothing to do with
tagging. Amarok still lacks advanced tagging features, especially
compared to Quod Libet, but even compared to most other tag editors.
Maybe "tracking" would be a better word.

[0]
 http://www.sacredchao.net/quodlibet/browser/trunk/quodlibet/formats/_vorbis.
py?rev=1774 [1] http://www.sacredchao.net/quodlibet/wiki/Specs/VorbisComments
[2]
 http://amarok.kde.org/amarokwiki/index.php?title=Advanced_Tag_Features_%28AT
F%29&diff=9411&oldid=9372 --
Joe Wreschnig <piman at sacredchao.net>

-------------------------------------------------------

However, a quick reply to his points as they affect Amarok:

1) Seems QL saves statistics/rating information in the files themselves. Maybe 
that's a good idea for us?  It would stop any "ah, crap, someone made a 
mistake and now I just lost all my stats!" problems.  Unfortunately for him, 
since ATF has solely to do with using UIDs and functionality that comes from 
them, I'm a) not lying and b) didn't specifically target QL, since I listed 
pretty much every player.  He's just a defensive prick.

2)  Seems like he has never looked at the ID3v2 specification.  Oh well.  I 
guess this is too hard (from the ATF Wiki page):

Many of the most common digital audio formats, such as MP3...have a metadata 
field that can be used to store a unique identifier (UID). In fact, ID3v2 has 
an explicit field precisely for this functionality...

3)  It's called "Advanced Tag Features" not "Advanced Tagging Features."  It 
never purports to have anything to do with tagging, only to use the tag to do 
advanced things.  Amarok already has decent tagging features to begin with, 
such as tagging multiple files and the like.  However, "Advanced Tracking 
Features" is a pretty good name too.  Anyone have a preference for that name?

--Jeff