Audacity Forum

I still don't understand what you mean by "restrictive compared with other Windows apps". Surely Audacity is being less restrictive than many other Windows Apps in that it will allow you to use a non-standard file extension, whereas many other programs will force you to use the default. Audacity does not prevent you from using a dot in the file name, it just warns you that the name that you have entered appears to have a non-standard file extension.

I believe the wording is "Are you sure you want to save the file under this name? Yes/No"

What do you suggest that Audacity should do? Are you saying that if you are exporting in (for example) FLAC format, that it should always append ".flac" to the name that you type? (Surely that would be more restrictive). Or would you prefer that Audacity just used whatever name you type with no warning about non-standard file extensions? Or would you prefer something else?

I suggesting that Audacity allows filenames to contain periods e.g. "D.O.S.E feat. Mark E. Smith - Plug Myself In" without displaying a warning about nonstandard extensions. This would match other Windows apps.

Note that I'm not specifying anything about extensions, although I note that you can choose from a list of common extensions in the "Save As type" drop-down box, or else specify your own extension by selecting 'other uncompressed files'. This all seems fine to me.

mr-b wrote:I note that you can choose from a list of common extensions in the "Save As type" drop-down box, or else specify your own extension by selecting 'other uncompressed files'.

I think that I see where the confusion is coming from. When you select a "file type" to export your audio, you are selecting the format that you want to use (and only indirectly selecting what the extension should be). The file extension has no affect whatsoever on the format - it is merely an indicator to help applications recognise the format.

Using Textpad you can create a text file and call it "test.wav". Of course naming it such does not make it a WAV file, though if you double click on the file you will probably have an audio application launch and try (but fail) to play it.

Audacity's behaviour is that if there appears to be no file extension (there is no dot in the name) it will automatically add the default file extension for the format that you have chosen. If it looks like you have typed a name with a file extension (the name includes a dot) then Audacity will ask.

If you want to export a file with the name "D.O.S.E feat. Mark E. Smith - Plug Myself In", then you can do that, but as far as I can see Audacity can only take one of these three approaches:
1) It assumes that what you really want is to have a file extension to match the chosen format and so adds the extension automatically.
2) It assumes that the name you typed is the full name including a custom file extension.
3) Rather than assume either 1) or 2), Audacity asks you.

It's simple enough to save a flac file called "D.O.S.E feat. Mark E. Smith - Plug Myself In" all you do is type it and click YES.
It's also simple enough to save a flac file called "D.O.S.E feat. Mark E. Smith - Plug Myself In.flac" all you do is type it and click YES.

The warnings given by other users previously in this topic are simply recommendations based on their experience. I would tend to agree with them that it is generally good practice to stick to alphanumeric names.
As an example, if you upload a song called "D.O.S.E feat. Mark E. Smith - Plug Myself In.flac" into a web site and create a link to it, then there's about a 50% chance that the link won't work because of the spaces being converted to %20
As another example, I can create a WAV file called "DOSEMark E. Smith.wav" but it won't work on a Windows computer because Windows treats back-slash as indicating a directory change.

Tx for the explanation.

I think the issue here is that the "Save As type" is trying to cover two things. If saving files with custom extensions is really an oft-used feature then I suggest there should be a "File Format" selector and then use "Save As Type" for the extension (and it should ignore filename periods).

However I'd wager that the vast majority of ppl are not wanting to create custom extensions and so the Save As type should just select the format and the commonly-used standard extension (and ignore filename periods).
Otherwise the unfortunate net result is that the dialogue box just ends up confusing the normal Windows user since it does not behave like other Windows apps.

mr-b wrote:since it does not behave like other Windows apps.

There are a few things that Audacity does not do quite the same way as other Windows apps - for example, look in the "Help" menu and you'll see that "About Audacity" is not in the usual place

I'm not a programmer so I don't know all of the details, but some of Audacity's "quirks" are because it has been constructed using wxWidgets which is a kind of framework for developing cross-platform applications. Of course the most important way in which Audacity is not like a "normal" Windows application is that you do not need to use a Windows operating system.