On Jan 30, 2008 10:11 PM, David K. Gasaway <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Explain again what value this typography brings to the table. Typography, by > definition, is a set of rules to improve layout and readability of type _in > print_. How does it apply to track titles in a database?
The "in print" part is not part of the definition. It's the art and technique of using type (graphic characters). The value of having it in database is that good typographical conventions are easy to propagate to users of the database. The titles in the database have _no_ value unless someone actually looks at them, ie they are typeset. The problem here is that we clump a _lot_ of information (see the schema posted here above) in a single text field, the "title" of a track. In this case, having good conventions is important because it's very hard to re-format the data later. (Note that there is absolutely zero discussion on MB about whether or not the correct name of an mp3 file is "Artist - Album - Title.mp3" or "Title - Artist (Album).mp3". That's because the database has different fields for those elements, and it's trivial to format them according to personal preferences.) Ideally typography should be a separate issue. What we'd be discussing is how to format the various pieces of info in the title so that they're easy to tell apart. We could then use Picard (or whatever) to split the fields and apply any typographical rules we wanted. The problem is that this splitting is pretty much impossible without using very weird characters (that aren't used in normal titles), which would leave us in the same situation, only harder. So it's a good idea to pick up good typographical rules before committing data into tags, so minimize the need for fixing things later. -- Bogdan Butnaru — [EMAIL PROTECTED] "I think I am a fallen star, I should wish on myself." – O. PS: Example: Suppose I want to use the MB database to print a catalog of music, sell it, and give lots of money back to the MB foundation. Many if not most of the prospective buyers would be interested in something of high quality. An example feature would be to use correct quotes in titles that contain quotes, according to the language of each title. This is between very hard and impossible, because a long time ago, for the sake of simplicity, we chose to allow only " in the tags. Since quotes only appear in a small fraction of the tags, that wouldn't have been a big cost, but changing them all now it would be. I totally support not making that kind of decision in the future. PPS. Remember that this only happens when we stick more than one kind of info in a single text tag. That's why I also strongly support any kind of evolution towards more specific tags.
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