[uf-new] hAudio Issue D4: 2008-01-10 rel-enclosure does not allow forlinks to streaming files

[Martin McEvoy]

Hello Toby

Toby A Inkster wrote:
> Tantek wrote:
>> Toby wrote:
>
>> differentiating between download and streaming URLs
>> > in the case where both are available.
>>
>> That distinction is already made via different MIME types on the 
>> enclosure, reflected in the type attribute (on a or link tags). No 
>> need to invent something new.
>
> I've written an hAudio -> M3U converter (M3U is a common playlist 
> format supported by several media players including Winamp, XMMS and 
> iTunes) and do indeed use the 'type' attribute to differentiate 
> between playable downloads (e.g. MP3s, OGGs, etc) and downloads which 
> are not directly playable (e.g. BitTorrent files, ZIP files, etc). 
> This distinction needs to be made in order to avoid placing 
> non-playable files into the playlist.
>
> However, the percentage of links that actually *include* a 'type' 
> attribute is woefully small. Performing HTTP HEAD requests for each 
> file would be too slow.
>
> One solution of course might be for hAudio to strongly encourage the 
> 'type' attribute to be set on any rel=enclosure links. It would help 
> if all the examples of the Wiki included the attribute, and a list of 
> commonly used MIME types could be provided to help newcomers. (Some 
> are not immediately obvious - e.g. application/ogg instead of audio/ogg.)
>
The haudio proposal does say

"The type of the file /MAY/ be specified by using the |type| specifier 
for a URI."

http://microformats.org/wiki/haudio#Full_Download_.28Enclosure.29

Maybe this can be changed to:

"The type of the file SHOULD be specified by using the type specifier 
for a URI."

Maybe may encorage more haudio publishers to use the type="" specifier, 

Its  also good to note that once haudio eventually becomes more stable 
we can then start adding extra pages such as hAudio Parsing and hAudio 
Authoring.


Thanks

Martin Mcevoy