on the current behaviour of 1) using red and 2) defaulting to ID3 v2.4

[Zhang Weiwu <zhangweiwu realss com>]

This is discussing the problem:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/easytag/+bug/684352

I wish I can get a general discussion here on the list before I put a 
concise conclusion / suggestion on the bug report, because the topic seems 
to be bigger than that specific bug. This topic has two sub-topics:

First: the choice of using RED in the UI.

Currently easytag display unsaved tags and tags in unsupported version in 
RED color, prompting users to save it in a supported version (ID3 2.4).

The color RED usually mean "stop, caution and do not do it", while in
EasyTag it means "please proceed on saving it", almost the opposite meaning.

RED is not suitable to carry the concept of need-to-save, which usually is 
done by a telltale prefix: *.  The other connotation connected to RED is 
that: once the file is saved, it may not be compatible with some devices or 
players, hence RED for "Caution".  However it is rather far-fetching for 
users to conceptualize this, especially not in the musical mood.

And second: the choice of using ID3 v2.4 program-wide.

> UTF-8 and 2.3 does not (only UTF-16 and ISO-8859-1). While UTF-8 is a (in
> many ways) better encoding for most users, its main benefit is to save 
> space in tags. Trading that benefit for reduced compatibility may not be 
> worth it.

Can I assume that the field width of ID3 tag is limited by number of bytes, 
instead of number of characters, hence "main benefit is to save space"?

If so, you are using a western assumption! The Chinese and Japanese 
ideographs are saved in less number of bytes in UTF16 than save in UTF-8. 
Just randomly copy some Chinese text and save them in UTF16 and UTF-8 to 
compare the result text file length.

Had EasyTag be written by a Chinese, he could as well say: "We default to 
ID3 2.3 because this version saves in UTF16, with its main benifit of saving 
spaces in tags. Trading that benefit for reduced compatibility may not be 
worth it."

Should I say EasyTag is presumptuous? No, we the Chinese are worse. From my 
observation, most Chinese-made players and tag editors did not move forward 
to ID3v2 at all. Most default to ID3v1, simply taking any data as Chinese 
local encoding, hence all of them show junk text with legit ID3v1 tags that 
contains umlauts.  Luckyly so few Chinese listen to German music that we 
presumptuously ignore their inconvenience, just like our online music stores
conveniently repalcing é/ë with e for any european music imported.

In fact, if a text is in a Latin-based language, you get more characters per 
byte by saving in ISO-8859-1 than in UTF-8. If it is in a ideographic 
language, you get more characters per byte by saving in UTF-16 than in 
UTF-8.  There is nothing to lose by not using UTF-8 at all. The beauty of 
UTF-8 is that we don't have to choose between the two scenarios, simple in 
the thinking and implementation.