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Topic: APEv2 tags Vorbis Comments (Read 2048 times) previous topic - next topic
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APEv2 tags Vorbis Comments

I’m curious to know the technical reasons why WavPack implemented APEv2 tags rather than Vorbis Comments given the latter natively supports UTF-8, is easier to parse and seemingly more commonly encountered in contemporary container formats (Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, Opus, and Matroska).

Re: APEv2 tags Vorbis Comments

Reply #1 –
Where did you get the idea that Matroska uses Vorbis Comments? "Vorbis Comments" are used in formats that use the Ogg container + FLAC even when it uses its own native container. It's not a tagging standard you can use everywhere, it needs to be baked into file format specifications for programs to be able to look for it and support it.
APEv2 tag on the other hand is usable everywhere, doesn't require file format to be designed for it, is easier to parse and write than Vorbis Comments, and supports everything Vorbis Comments do and more.

Offtopic, but "Vorbis Comments" is a silly name in my opinion and I refuse to call FLAC tags that. It was valid when it was used for Vorbis format but using that name with other formats is misleading and annoying. Each file format using "Vorbis Comments" needs special support, it's not a single standard that can be handled universally.

Re: APEv2 tags Vorbis Comments

Reply #2 –
Could've sworn I'd read that it does or used a tagger previously that wrote vc tags to .mkv files.  In any event, I see Mutagen makes handling APEv2 relatively simple for my purposes so not a lot to do to incorporate managing WavPack metadata in my scripting.

Re: APEv2 tags Vorbis Comments

Reply #3 –
Recall that WavPack originally (up to 3.x) used the .wav format with its own hack on filling in compressed rather than uncompressed data. Sure it is possible to put metadata in non-audio RIFF chunks, WavPack did - and does - set out to restore the original file completely with the original non-audio chunks as well, so those were immutable.

Then a tagset had to be a separate chunk to be prepended or appended (just like for .mp3) - not integrated into the file format.
Furthermore, back in 2003-ish, WavPack did not really do tagging - only permit it and then later read some of them. When something else had to do the actual tagging, then use ID3 or APE.

(Doesn't APEv2 support UTF-8, by the way?)

Re: APEv2 tags Vorbis Comments

Reply #4 –
Quote from: Porcus on
(Doesn't APEv2 support UTF-8, by the way?)

I think it does for values, but not keys.  No big deal though, ASCII more than covers tagnames.
 

Re: APEv2 tags Vorbis Comments

Reply #5 –
Vorbis Comment allows ASCII-only in key names too, with the addition that equal sign (=) is also forbidden.