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Topic: About APEv2 item keys and case-sensitivity. (Read 4967 times) previous topic - next topic
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About APEv2 item keys and case-sensitivity.

If someone with the needed knowledge could please clarify a question for me, then i would appreciate it

The following part about item keys(tag fields) in the APEv2 spec. i would really like to get explained :

# APE Tags Item Key are case sensitive.
# [...]
# And nevertheless Tag readers are recommended to be case insensitive.

I know that this means that tag readers are recommended to be case-insensitive, so that it won't matter what case we use for the tags, but i am currious about why this specific wording ? Why not then just state that the item keys are (recommended)case-insensitive ? What is the exact meaning about having item keys which are case-sensitive and then recommending tag readers to be case-insensitive ? What exactly is it then that is defined to be case-sensitive ? My guess is that it means that the case used when defining the tags is stored - Am i correct in this ? The defined item keys in the APEv2 spec. is nearly everyone in title-case(first letter in upper-case and rest in lower-case), and this is fine for Artist and Album etc. but for my EACLOG tag, which i would like to match the spec. but as it can't be Eaclog and as EACLOG dosen't really match it that good, then i'm in doubt of what to use... I have then just used eaclog.

This is maybe not terribly important to most people, but i'm very interessted in these small technical things about the formats i personally use, and i have been wondering about this alot

Finally, i apologise if this is in the wrong forum, as i didn't really know which forum would be appropriate, but as WavPack uses APEv2 as it's native tagging format and as my question is related to WavPack APEv2 tagging, then i hope that it's okey to be posted here, or otherwise, then i ask a mod to kindly move it elsewhere, where he sees it to fit better

About APEv2 item keys and case-sensitivity.

Reply #1
The following part about item keys(tag fields) in the APEv2 spec. i would really like to get explained :

# APE Tags Item Key are case sensitive.
# [...]
# And nevertheless Tag readers are recommended to be case insensitive.

I believe that it was Frank Klemm who wrote that, and since English is not his first language that might explain the choice of wording. It might also be that he thought it was not the best way to do it (since I think Matt did the original design) and so he was trying to make it sound sillier than it was.

In any event, the way I interpret it (and implemented it) is exactly how Windows stores and handles filenames. The case is stored and is retrievable, but case is not used for lookups. This also implies that you can't have two items whose name only differs in case, which was the middle item in that list that you snipped.

 

About APEv2 item keys and case-sensitivity.

Reply #2
Hi David

Thank you very much for your insight and for the details about your implementation, i really appreciate it

Best regards and take care

CU, Martin.