SIFD Digital Archive - Internal Structure - The xxx.all file

Contents of the xxx.all file

Each album or collection is in its own folder.

Each of these folders contains an xxx.all file, where xxx may be any characters, but is typically either the name of the folder or the characters index.

The first lines of the xxx.all file describe the folder and its contents.

If any entries need unicode characters, the xxx.all file must be saved with UTF-8 encoding.

Each line starts with a character, a colon and a space.  The order of these lines is arbitary.

• T: Album Title
• A: Album Artist
• Y: Year of release or publication
• G: Genre
• P: xxx.m3u - Playlist for music albums - omit if no music
• P: xxx.m4v,xxx.ogv,wwwxhhh,tn_xxx.m4v,tn_wwwxhhh - Playlist for video albums.  This is a comma separated list of: m4v video file, ogv video file, the dimensions of the files (width x height), half-size video (thumbnail for use on iPhones, etc) and dimensions of this.
• J: xxx.jpg - Album artwork - omit if none and repeat for multiple items of artwork

The remaining lines describe each item in the collection.  Each group of lines start with an index number that typically monotonically increases for each item described, but only needs to differ from the index of the preceding and following items.  The index number is followed by a period, then a character, a colon and a space.

(Assuming the first item:)

• 1.A: Item Artist or performer
• 1.L: Album Title
• 1.G: Item Genre.  This entry may be repeated for items containing a mixture of genres.
• 1.D: Duration of music item (Mins:Secs) given as MM:SS
• 1.T: Title of this item.
  
  This entry may be repeated, and any names specified in subsequent lines are treated as aliases of the first.  If not specified, the file name will be substituted for this.  A name beginning with "The" will automatically be listed as an alias of "Title (The)".  This automatic behavior may be overridden by prefixed the title with a "*", a title of "*The title" will only be listed as "The title".
  
  
• 1.C: Comments - Any relevant comments or observations.
  The comment line may be repeated and each subsequent entry is concatenated to the end of any previous entries.  If the (last, if more than one) comment ends with "(Noindex)" then no index entry will be created for this item.  If this follows any other text, than a space must be used as a separator.

  (Depreciated: Including (Alias:"Title alias") or (Alias:"Title alias1","Title alias2") in a comment adds extra aliases for the title - now superceed by allowing multiple title entries.  Alias entries included in an mp3 comment tag will be processed (by addcd.cmd) as multiple title entries).

• 1.F: Item file name.  This is normally the last line in the group.
  
  For a video album, this is the name of the html file for this album, followed by “?Time=xxx” where xxx is the start time (in tenths of seconds) in the video to play for this item.

Less commonly used entries:

• 1.N: Track number.
  
  This is the MP3 file track number.  Only listed if track numbers are not sequential.  Only used for information.
  
  
• 1.W: Composer (writer).
  
  Only used for information.
  
  
• 1.O: Original artist.
  
  Only used for information.
  
  
• 1.R: Country and/or region of the item.
  
  Only used for information.
  
  
• 1.I: Thumbnail image to be displayed for this item.
  
  This specifies the file name of a thumbnail image to be displayed for this item instead of the name of the item.  Clicking on this will display the full item as defined by the F (file name) entry.  If part of a package, multiple items with a thumbnail will be displyed horizontally.
  
  
• 1.P: Part number of a package of items.
  
  Specified as n/m for part n of a package of m items.  These must be sequential.  First item of a 5 item package is 1/5 and last is 5/5.  Horizontal rules are drawn to delineate the start and end of the package.
  
  
• 1.V: Video information.
  
  Used by multi-video albums.  Specifies the dimensions of the video, the bitrate and any chapter information available for this video.
  
  
• 1.X: Extra information relating to the item.
  
  Only used for information.  This entry may be repeated if there are several items of extra information.
  
  

Processing the xxx.all file

The xxx.all files are processed by running the makehtml.cmd script.  This should be run at the point in the file structure that the various html index files are to be created.  All xxx.all files in all subdirectories (folders) will be examined and indexed.

The makehtml.cmd script is written in the Rexx language and is processed by the Rexx interpreter.