[sword-devel] Linked in audio files

[David Blue]

On Wednesday, August 25, 2010 07:29:28 am Nic Carter wrote:
> I ask that we don't favour (or even use) ogg vorbis (FYI, "ogg" is a
> container format, "vorbis" is the audio format codec).  I'm going to
> completely ignore any arguments that could be made for or against the idea
> that it is patent free or infringes on patents, and I'll instead look to
> the fact that Apple and others have decided that it's iffy and not worth
> the risk & hence there is no native built-in decoder available in iOS
> (iPhone/iPad/iPod touch) for it.
> Hence, for it to work nicely in PocketSword without me having to include my
> own sound decoder, I'd prefer mp3 or aac.

I'm sorry but the patent arguments are important to at least 3 front ends if 
they run on linux, and in order to avoid statically linking in a decoder to 
the engine you have to use a format supported on those platforms, and out of 
the box installs of most linux doesn't have mp3 and possibly aac. Now granted 
these things are easy to come by, and most users will have them installed, but 
not all.

And patents aside, the ogg formats, vorbis, flac, speex, celt, etc. are all 
open source/open format projects and as sword is an open source project as 
well it only makes sense, that we would support these formats as well. 

My support would go with speex or celt as they are built for speech and 
compress for that well.