[Playlist] Re: [Vorbis-dev] OggDisk?

Wed May 9 15:29:28 UTC 2007

Hi Ian,

Ian Malone wrote:
>>  * it doesn't allow for "nested" or "tree-like" playlists (which would be
>> needed e.g. for collections of films sorted according to the genre 
>> into several
>> sub-collections etc.)

A track can point to an XSPF document.  Nesting is fine.

>>  * it doesn't describe "graphically" how the playlist is to be displayed
>> (in contrast with DVD's). DVD's are on the other too much presentation-
>> oriented and don't expose the "metadata" to the user. So probably
>> some model that separates the semantics and presentation (in the
>> same manner like CSS for HTML does) would be ideal for such a playlist.

>>  * it doesn't have some important elements (like thumbnail image/video
>> for a/v content and for images)

Just use an image element in your track and put a thumbnail there. 
These images are usually thumbnail sized anyway.

> I don't know much about XSPF, so I'm sending you to the
> people who do (mailing lists at
> <http://lists.musicbrainz.org/mailman/listinfo/playlist>).
> A couple of initial reactions though:
> Can an XSPF specify another XSPF as an object to be played?

Yup.  Just not inline.

> XML documents can include multiple namespaces, what are the
> possibilities for using XHTML+CSS together with XSPF to
> produce both the playlist and specify its presentation
...
> Pure XSPF or one of the possible restatements of it,
> for example microformats.

It's interesting that you bring up the idea of "restatements," since we 
have just made the first real move to canonicalize a restatement.  In 
that case the format is JSON.

We don't have a canonical restatement of XSPF in semantic XHTML, though 
of course we could develop one.  (I wouldn't call such a thing a 
microformat, by the way.  The rules of microformats don't allow 
restatements).  I think that it would be a lot easier to implement what 
you're thinking of if you have a separate XSPF document and HTML 
document.  For example, call this "my.html":
<html>
<head>
<title></title>
<link rel="alternate" type="application/xspf+xml" src="my.xspf" />
</head>
<body>...your presentation of the playlist here...</body>
</html>

Not that you couldn't do the playlist semantics within HTML as well, 
just that I seriously doubt you want to expend that much labor.  It is a 
fuckload of work to design, implement and maintain a new format.

-Lucas