And here's my answer...
Begin forwarded message:
Date: Mon, 30 Jun 2003 18:43:23 +0200
From: Alexander Leidinger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: Adam Luter <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: [mp3encoder] Lame genre bug (annoyance).
On Mon, 30 Jun 2003 11:04:52 -0500
Adam Luter <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > > >>The problem is that lame is very stubborn about setting the genre. If
> > > >>you specify an invalid genre, lame never falls back on a default (such
> > > >>as "other").
> >
> > Yes, and when an user misspells something, we should tell him about
> > this, and not fall back to a default value.
> >
> > > If you want to change a little the tagging functions to properly display
> > > and return an error, I am ok with it.
> >
> > I try to get some time...
>
> I can agree with this line of thinking, but shouldn't you be able to
> turn this off? At the least, if we are in quiet mode, I think it would be
> nice if we could still use a silent default?
Personally I would say "no". If I want to set a specific genre I want to
know if LAME isn't able to do it and either be able to determine if I
did a mistake (typo) or to choose another genre.
I not only like to see such behavior from LAME I also want this behavior
in frontends to LAME (in case I use such a tool). This is off course my
personal preference.
Any tool which fails to notify me of a mistake and silently uses a
default is buggy in my point of view. IMHO it is more surprising to see
mysteriously a different genre than to see an error show up which
notifies me of a wrong genre. And human computer interaction guidelines
agree here with me.
You may present the user with the possibility to either use a default
value or to choose another genre if LAME moans about it, and you may
provide an option in your program to always use the default genre if
LAME moans, but the preconfigured default (userfriendly) action of a
program should be to meet the expectations of an user, which is in this
case to _not_ use a default genre if the specified genre doesn't work.
Everything else doesn't fit into the common "usability" view.
Bye,
Alexander.
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http://www.Leidinger.net Alexander @ Leidinger.net
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--
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http://www.Leidinger.net Alexander @ Leidinger.net
GPG fingerprint = C518 BC70 E67F 143F BE91 3365 79E2 9C60 B006 3FE7
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