[MPlayer-users] playlist file syntax

[D Richard Felker III]

On Thu, Dec 09, 2004 at 04:41:31PM +0000, James Gatt wrote:
> > > I do agree with not changing things for the sake of it, however I
> > > haven't yet seen what I would call a good reason for keeping the
> >
> > Which was my point: You are asking for a good reason to keep the current
> > format, whereas I (and probably some others) have not yet seen the reason for
> > a new format. This seems the wrong order to me.
> 
> Because the current format uses every available character other than linefeed as
> a part of the filename, there is no room for any kind of extension. If every
> suggestion will be refused if it breaks the current format then mplayer
> playlists can never improve. I was questioning this reasoning, not suggesting a
> new format. (The original suggestion was not mine.)

this is the huge advantage of the current format. you don't have to do
horrible escaping to make a usable playlist. typical media filenames
contain all kinds of characters you might not exepect if you're one of
these people with just a few hundred mp3s tops, who names them all
with just lowercase letters and underscores. having to run your list
of filenames through some escaping preprocessor is ugly and
undesirable to most people, especially if there's little or no
practical gain. if there is some practical gain, then there should
simply be two different formats. but removing the format that's most
useful to most users is stupid.

rich