Re: [Muine] TagLib

[Tamara <foxxygirltamara gmail com>]

On 7/12/05, Brad Taylor <brad getcoded net> wrote:
> Hi Tamara,
> 
> > Today, Todd Berman mentioned Cowbell [http://more-cowbell.org/], a tag
> > editor which looks really nice (I don't have access to my computer
> > right now but I'll try it at my first chance).
> 
> I'm quite honoured that people like Cowbell so much!  After about a year
> of incubation, its was great to get it out there.
> 
> > This uses Clemens
> > Koppensteiner's C# wrapper of TagLib
> > [http://developer.kde.org/~wheeler/taglib.html]. For those of you in
> > the dark, TagLib is an ID3/Ogg/Flac/etc. tag reader and writer. I
> > missed it because it is developed in the context of KDE but it is an
> > independent library. Koppensteiner's wrappers aren't really
> > maintained, it looks like he just released it a year ago on his blog
> > and that was it (I haven't looked to see if the code included with
> > Cowbell differs from the original wrappers -- I would assume so, since
> > things have change in Mono in the last year).
> >
> > The wrapping for TagLib becomes somewhat difficult because TagLib is
> > written in C++. C# support for C is great and we use that a lot but
> > C++ is more complicated and (in my understanding) requires the use of
> > a managed C++ library to sit between the C# and C++. TagLib does
> > provide a C API but it is more basic than the C++ interface (I haven't
> > really gotten a chance to compare them) -- Koppensteiner's code only
> > wraps the simpler C API, which will probably be sufficient for our
> > purposes.
> 
> To be truthful, there isn't much that you need to do that isn't exposed
> in the C api.  Its actually quite nice -- just edit any of the fields,
> call Save, and you're done.
> 
> > TagLib claims it's much faster than either id3lib and libvorbisfile
> > (which we use). As cleaning C code out of Muine is one of my main
> > priorities, I propose that we should look into replacing existing
> > dependencies on id3lib and libvorbisfile with TagLib.
> 
> TagLib is a perfect choice for this -- its incredibly fast (even over
> interop) and is quite clean.  Unfortunately, since it is highly
> abstracted, it only exposes a select number of fields; namely Artist,
> Album, Title, Track Number, Title, Comment and Genre.  This represents
> quite a good amount of fields, but it doesn't include # of Tracks or any
> of the album cover embedding that id3lib can do.

Hmm... we just need Artist, Album, Title, Track # and Title but we
also need # of Tracks and Album Cover... hmm....

> So, if you're looking for a full featured tag library, you won't find it
> in TagLib, but its benefits (speed and transparency) outweigh the costs,
> imho.
> 
> A perfect system in this situation would probably be to use TagLib when
> you can (in the case of MP3, Ogg and Flac) and use the slower GStreamer
> for compatibility.
> 
> Another choice would be to use Aaron Bockover's entagged-sharp.  He
> already has a good start on a port of the java library which supports
> AAC, Ogg, Flac, MP3, WMV, ASF, and a myriad of other formats all in
> managed code.  However, it doesn't currently support editing and his
> code is about twice as slow to read as TagLib (even over interop), but
> its definitely worth considering.
> 
> I'd be happy to help out with the TagLib bits in Muine if you could use
> it.

oh sure thanks. i'll look at it when i get a chance. 

> 
> -Brad
> 
> --
> Brad Taylor
> Genome Software LLC
> http://www.getcoded.net
> 
> 
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