After looking around for some solutions on how to tags files that have a lot of detail about them, I think perhaps at the moment the best thing to do is store the data in a separate file.

Questions now;

- Is there any taggers that support import and exporting of tag information to a seperate file? (this impacts 2nd question)

- What file format would be best for this, ie text, XML, HTML?

- Can you embed this file within a tag as well?

- Any other recommendations for this crazy scheme?

- Is there any taggers that support import and exporting of tag information to a seperate file? (this impacts 2nd question)

I haven't found one

- What file format would be best for this, ie text, XML, HTML?
XML

- Can you embed this file within a tag as well?
Yes

- Any other recommendations for this crazy scheme?
XM3

Let me see... If you have 100GiB of music at maybe 5MiB per track, you have somewhere around 20000 files. Say bye bye to any sort of decent performerance with pretty much any other file system than ReiserFS 4 on Linux.

And imagine the fragmentation this could cause on an NTFS (or $deity forbid FAT) formatted disk *shudder*.

And even 100GiB is not *that* much. Maybe 250 losslessly encoded albums or so.

Any system has its pros and cons. I'm using the xm3 system for four months now and for me it has more pros than cons.

@xm3 - I take it that this is a bit of a personal project? I think it has a lot of potential and i imangine someone has put time and effort into this. But it also seems that it is not offering any real information on how to accomplish this, the webpage has no news since Jan, and the main xml example seems broken. I like the idea - just how to implement it into something useful & practical.

@infophreak - not sure why you think it would be such a performance hit - most modern computers should not have too much problem with those quantities, perhaps the fragmentation problem is a issue but i don't mind running a defrag automatically every few days to get the results i want

>main xml example seems broken.

The stylesheet didn't function because the internet security level must be set to medium-low, or save the xml file to your harddisk.

>I like the idea - just how to implement it into something useful & practical.

That will take years. There must come taggers that manipulate the xml file, players that use the xml file, databases, parsers etc. For the moment I'm working on the decision which database to use. Jet or SQL. I prefer SQL, but I'm afraid that 99,9% will never use it, because SQL is too difficult. On the other hand wouldn't it be better to place the system in the high-end market and forget the "everyone market"?

At this point there are more questions than answers, but the xml schema definition (XSD) is 99% OK, so the start is good.

The database of choice is : MSDE

MSDE.

You can use a cue sheet. It works also for a standalone track, and it is an already existing standard compatible with some player (foobar2000 at least). Furthermore it is extendable as you can add whatever tagg you want, replaygain for example.

I don't think cue sheets address my original request

This is an example of what the majority of the xml files look like.

<audiofile>
<id>{9D332A05-BB06-4639-903C-BECD000E3457}</id>
<composer>Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)</composer>
<work>Symphony No 4 in E minor</work>
<identifier>Op 98</identifier>
<movement>1 Allegro non troppo</movement>
<movement>2 Andante moderato</movement>
<movement>3 Allegro giocoso - Poco meno presto - Tempo I</movement>
<movement>4 Allegro energico e passionato - Più allegro</movement>
<year>1957</year>
<location>Kingsway Hall, London</location>
<performer>
<name>Philharmonia Orchestra</name>
</performer>
<performer>
<name>Otto Klemperer</name>
<role>conductor</role>
</performer>
<codec>
<name>LAME</name>
</codec>
<source>CD</source>
</audiofile>


Advantages :

- you can see what your audio file is about in browser/texteditor
- you can search for a particular song with text search
- you can import the data in any database
- extensible
- xml standard
- works with all audio files!

In browser :