On Sun, 26 Sep 2004 18:42:36 -0700, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Those links are only meaningful to an experienced Wikipedian. They are of absolutely no use to a casual visitor who may just want to hear how a word on Wiktionary is pronounced. A link would need to be placed on each and every page that has a .ogg file on it, much as is done at sites that have .pdf files.
Communicating these issues can be a big problem. I know about it because I subscribe to this mailing list. I rarely visit the other two sites.
OK, a proposal: * A [[Help:Sounds]] page should be created * This page should be linked to automatically from the "Image:" (description) page for every file matching *.ogg [since we have no better way of determining file type] * It should be strongly encouraged for people to add a link to this if they use a [[Media:]] link to an Ogg Vorbis file. * The page should be biased heavily towards casual visitors who have no prior knowledge of Ogg; possibly even no real conception of different filetypes * Software for playback should be listed in a step-by-step/how-to style, with the name most likely to be recognised mentioned at the beginning of each item
e.g.: "Sounds on {{sitename}} are stored in a format called [[Ogg Vorbis]], which is a form of compression which makes them faster to download. It is similar to the popular format known as [[MP3]], but there are a legal issues associated with that format that make it undesirable for our use.
==How to play sounds== Unfortunately, the Ogg Vorbis format is not yet as common as others, so you may find you do not have software that can play these files. Below is a list of what programs can be used:
===Windows=== * '''Winamp''': support included in full installs of versions 2.80 and later; [http://.. available here] ** if you used a "compact" installer, you may need [http://.. this plugin] * '''Windows Media Player''': support can be added through [http://.. this plugin] * '''QuickTime''': plugin available [http://.. here]
===MacOS=== (similar)
===Linux and UNIX systems=== (etc)
Would this cover what people want?