ftblog

Seems like somebody felt like raising the question whether arename should be
in debian, when there are already many many audio file renaming tools in it.

Well, fair enough. So let's use his search pattern (~drenam ~dtag) and see
what is really there.

The first question should be: Which of these packages are actual competitors?
If we assume an open answer, it probably breaks down roughly to these:
  easytag, id3ren, lltag, mp3rename, mpgtx and tagtool.

Nevermind that this mixes GUI and CLI applications...

Let's pick off the easy ones:
  id3ren
This is a simple renamer for mp3 files - and secondly, a tagging utility.
There is virtually no flexibility in it. It has no configuration file. It has
no support for any other file types. Its documentation is limited to a
description of the supported options. Nothing more. Everything you do, you do
via numerous command line options. If anything, this tool could be used as a
backend to create a tool you would remotely want to use. This isn't a
competitor, not by a long shot.

  mp3rename
As far as renaming goes this one is comparable to id3ren. Its documentation is
worse. It does save options you used once to a configuration file, so
usability-wise it's probably a little better than id3ren. But again, there's
virtually no flexibility. Anything out of the ordinary you want to do? No-oh,
boy. Not with this one. Furthermore, this tool is limited to mp3 files. That's
not good enough to take as a serious competitor.

  mpgtx
This tool's main intend is not to rename audio files. It apparently does it,
too, but not with any more power than the two programs mentioned above. The
mpgtx documentation does contain quite some humour - which is a plus - but
it's not detailed enough at all. The renaming feature isn't really described
in the man page and it's website merely states the fact that it can do it (and
it hints at format strings like "%A" for the artist name). It's probably not
quite fair to compare it to what arename can do as mpgtx's main feature set is
something else. So, even though the "aptitude search" listed it and it debian
package description suggests it's a competitor, it really isn't.

Now one that could maybe persuade you to believe it's a worthy competitor:
  tagtool
A GUI utility to edit tags and rename files by looking at them. Let's look at
the renaming part, which is what arename does. It cannot handle track from
compilation albums. Its file name templates are not as powerful as the ones of
arename (not even version 3 - not to mention what arename version 4 will be
able to do). Tagtool does have some post-processing features - like replacing
whitespace by another character or case conversion. All of this can be very
easily done in arename hooks. When it comes to configurability tagtool is
nowhere near arename. All of the context sensitivity that you can get with
arename, tagtool just cannot offer. If you want one-shot renaming, tagtool may
do the trick for you. But anything more calls for a better renaming utility.
To close the deal, tagtool supports mp3 and ogg vorbis files. FLAC? Nope.
Also, tagtool's documentation is laughable. So no. Not really a competitor.

And now, the ones that get closer:
  lltag
At last a program that is actually documented. And it is even a command line
program. Still, comparing it to arename is not really fair. Lltag is an
automatic tagging tool, that is also able to rename files in a similar
fashion. When we only look at the renaming it soon becomes clear that lltag
cannot hold a candle to arename. Not much flexibility. No context sensitivity.
No support for compilation style albums. It does however support all file
formats, that arename3 supports (mp3, ogg vorbis and flac). Arename4 will
extend its file type support to more formats, but talking about future
features isn't fair at all. So yes, lltag is a program that can do similar
things as arename. It uses the same interface (command line) and supports the
same formats. But arename is the one that specializes in renaming. In lltag it
is just one of its features. And being a specialized tool, arename can do a
lot more than lltag when it comes to that particular feature set.

  easytag
Easytag, like lltag, can do both - edit tags and rename files by looking at
them. Its documentation could be better. It is a program with a graphical
interface. Apart from that, easytag is a pretty decent program. As for
supported file formats, it beats the living shit out of arename. It'll take
arename version 4 to close that gap. Easytag is quite configurable. It does
lack arename's context sensitivity, though. It has some post-processing
features, but not as broad as arename's hooks make it possible. Easytag
supports id3v2.4, which arename does not. That's a real advantage, as 2.4 is
the only id3v2 version that supports tags encoded in UTF-8. Arename will gain
that feature in the future (actually, the development version already does),
but currently it does not. Easytag however, doesn't have a dry-run mode.
That's a bummer. Before running over my audio library I *really* want a tool
to show me what it would do without actually doing it. (If I easytag actually
can do it, but I didn't find the button in it's GUI, feel free to mail me.)

Conclusion
In conclusion, only lltag and easytag come remotely close to arename. The
others just do not. When it comes to renaming arename also out-features lltag
pretty quickly.

Easytag has one or the other feature that arename doesn't. Mainly, it is its
wide wiiiide file format support and its support for id3v2.4. But when you
start to use advances features from arename - and be it only context sensitive
configuration - easytag cannot help you. Also, it is a GUI tool - which isn't
bad per se, but if you got a computer dedicated to serving music, say with
xmms2 serving the audio data. Chances are the machine is headless or maybe
without a working X11 installation in which case easytag wouldn't be the
weapon of choice either.

So, no. Debian really does not have "some of these" already. The specialized
renamers that actually are in debian are already inferior to the tools that do
both tagging *and* renaming.

If you want to batch-rename audio files on a debian machine, you got three
choices: lltag, easytag or arename. And when it comes to renaming, arename,
being the specialized tool it is, provides the most flexibility by far.

[Update 0]
Okay well. Seems like I missed two programs. 'Picard' and 'Exfalso'. Picard
didn't turn up in the aptitude search; exfalso, I missed. Both are GUI apps,
but what the hell.

So, exfalso. The interface is pretty straight forward. The renaming features
are not shabby. It does support more file formats than arename v3. Its
documentation is virtually non-existant. There is no context sensitivity at
all. There is a plugin feature but I couldn't find any plugins that would
enhance the renaming features. It does have a preview feature, which is nice.
It doesn't support multi-artist albums, as far as I can see. If it does, the
crappy documentation conceals it nicely. All in all, not too bad.
To me it feels viable to use this as a one-shot tool or to fix single file
names. It doesn't work recursively, so it's not usable for complete
collections either. Certainly one of the better programs, but not really
comparable with what arename has to offer.

And the last contestant, picard. Another GUI tagger-renamer combination.
It also support a truck-load of file formats. More than arename, easily.
So, until arename4 is out, this is an advantage. The on-disk documentation,
however sucks. Bad. There's something on their website... Oh well, this is a
graphical application; and who reads manuals for these anyway..? I don't find
picard's user interface to be as straight forward as the ones of easytag and
exfalso. It looks like a file manager. Though, it's not too obvious what the
difference between the left and the right window pane is. The file name
templates look quite promising - in fact more capable than arename3 (again,
arename4 will cure that). I don't see any dryrun or preview feature.
Picard does support recursive scans. But. Picard doesn't seem to actually
use the file name templates. At least the names it produces for me look
significantly different to what the default templates would suggest. Also,
it's quite slow. Six tracks took about ten seconds on a 1.5GHz Pentium
mobile. It looked quite promising at first, but it turns out, I wouldn't
use this tool on my audio collection. No way. If a template looks like this:
  $if2(%albumartist%,%artist%)/%album%/$num(%tracknumber%,2) %title%
...and the filename turns out like this: "01 Trackname.mp3" that's just not
what you'd expect...

So, I think my previous conclusion still stands. If picard would actually
behave the way its configuration dialogues would suggest, then it would have
to be among the usable solutions, too. But not the way it turned out for me.
Exfalso's lack of recursive operation takes it out of the possible choices.
Even though its interface is rather nice and the preview feature is well
thought-out.

[Update 1]
Jürgen tells me easytag does a preview by default.
Well, that's true in fact. Though, not very intuitive. It doesn't change
anything unless you hit the 'save' button. Which is nice. However, I wasn't
able to get a list that shows me all the changes that *would* be made with
respect to changing file names. I was only able to obtain that information
for the currently selected file. - But anyway, since easytag *does* have a
dryrun mode - and even active by default - that's another plus for the program.