Why was the character set override option removed?

[Hans Ecke]

> > In old versions of Amarok, there used to be an option under "Collection"
> > to specify the character set of id3v2 tags. I think that is because some
> > older versions of id3v2 do not allow you to specify the character set.
> 
> The tag recoding was removed because it had very unpleasant side effects. In 
> this mode, TagLib would only write v1 tags, but not v2. This generated 
> considerable confusion and a constant stream of of bug reports. 
> 
> If you need UTF-8 tags, you have to use a current ID3 version. V1 tags are 
> generally to be interpreted as ASCII.

So you are between a rock and a hard place here. The tag recoding gets 
you confusion but taglib (and pretty much every other ID3 tool) is 
obviously not ready for v2.4 tags. I'm sorry.

I think I see more of these bugs because my archive is quite large and 
also very international. I can not do without unicode.

Moving on, what do you recommend for me? 

I guess if you could point me to the changeset that removed the tag 
recoding I could try and compile my own Amarok versions. Not a lot of 
fun, but at least I could use Amarok again. 

Or would it be possible to bring the tag recoding feature back, but 
either with strong wording "don't do that unless you know you need it!" 
or only settable in the amarokrc and not in the UI. Bringing it back 
would only have to be for a limited time (2 years or so) till the ID3 
tools and libraries have bugfree support for v2.4.

Please help!

Thank you

Hans