[rox-devel] MusicBox and file extentions

[Lennon C. <mag...@gm...>]

MusicBox currently strips any part of a filename after a '.'. This is
annoying when I have files named without extensions, but which do have
dots in the filename. I propose that this behavior be modified such
that there is a reasonable limit to what defines an 'extension'.
Convention seems to be that extensions are between two and four
characters (inclusive), and don't contain whitespace. In regex terms,
instead of matching '\..*\Z' for a file extension, MB should match
'\.\S{2,4}\Z'. Another option may be '\.\w{2,4}\Z', which limits
extensions to alphanumeric characters.
This would keep the current behavior (which has the desirable effect
of not putting '.ogg' onto every song title), but not use it over
zealously (so, 'Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band' is reported
properly; current, it is reduced to 'Sgt').
A previous draft of this post suggested a user-visible option to
control whether to attempt matching extensions or not, however I feel
that the auto-guessing solution is better on two counts: it avoids
complicating the preferences dialogue further; and will work properly
most of the time, so that I can have some files using extensions and
others not playing at the same time, and have everything reporting
properly.

It may also be beneficial to put this function into ROX-Lib, since it
could be useful to other apps, and it would be better for everyone to
use the same rules.

-- 
Lennon Victor Cook
"He who receives an idea from me receives without lessening, as he who
lights his candle at mine receives light without darkening" - Thomas
Jefferson