On Thu, Jun 01, 2006 at 01:46:46PM +0100, Måns Rullgård wrote:
Luca Barbato said:
Oded Shimon wrote:
I actually considered it after sending this mail, I think the only advantage of 4-char fourcc is saying explictly in the spec all fourcc must be 4 bytes (even ommit the 'length' field for it). If we decide we don't want that, then IMO you are right and we should use more sane/readable names like 'vorbis' and 'dirac'. (But not stuff like "ISO/ITU 14496-3" which is even less readable)
I like "vorbis" and "dirac" too.
I'll second that as well.
Opposed. The only reasons for using something "fourcc"-like at all are 1) compatibility and 2) fits in 32bit int so easy to compare/pass in apis. If we're willing to abandon that we should do something more ambitious, but IMO it's a pain to abandon that and not useful. As someone (? :) said, the best standards processes codify existing practice when it's sane rather than inventing new things unnecessarily. If you look in the earlier fourcc threads, the goal in choosing some of the names is that they match the "most sane" fourcc already found in other file formats. Rich