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Re: About cdrecord -atip and -minfo

scdbackup@gmx.net wrote:

Hi,

me:

 not fixely standardized output of cdrecord -atip.
My backup tool is [was] grep'ing for "^  Is erasable".

Joerg:

Maybe, I should go back to the old string at least for the -atip
code as e.g. non-MMC drives stilll use the old string.


This seems to be a good idea.

As your long time user and frontened programmer i would
appreciate if the traditional ways of reporting media info
stay available and compatible. As your imitator i learned that other frontends do 
interpret those messages and try to act accordingly.



This is what -minfo currently prints for an appendable
multi-border DVD+R:


I understand -minfo shall become a new general source of
media info.

The current man-page entry for "-minfo" is still a bit
sparse. So i assume the format is not fixely determined
yet. It would need to be open for future media, anyway.

Maybe you should strive for something like the e-mail
headers: Some of them are standardized by RFCs, some are
plain freestyle of mail tools. Heavy evolution, total mess
- but i can still pick from them the information i need.
And in the following example I have to ask, is there any benefit to adding "Media-" to every line? It's the output of a media info request, and totally redundant. It's one more thing I have to type in to a pattern match, and unless the output of media info request is going to be poluted with something which isn't media info, this is just noise.
I like the idea of having a header-like format, however, it allows things to be added for humans without confusing parsing software. 
For CD media, that could be something like :

  Media-Current: CD-RW
  Media-Profile: 000Ah CD-RW
  Media-Profile: 0008h CD-ROM
  Media-Write-Status: is written
  Media-Close-Status: is appendable
  Media-Reuse: is erasable
  Media-Speed-Max: 10
  Media-Speed-Min: 4
  Media-Content-Layout: Session Track Type    Start      End     Size
  Media-Content-Track:        1     1 data        0    55253    55254
  ...
  Media-Content-Track:        5     5 data    77434    80515     3082
  Media-Msinfo: 77434,87416

The most important headers and their meaning should be described
in man cdrecord. Frontend programmers will love it.

--
bill davidsen <davidsen@tmr.com>
 CTO TMR Associates, Inc
 Doing interesting things with small computers since 1979
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