1. only lower ASCII in Title/Disc title/Edition ..everywhere
2. all Demos, -bans -> Sample
3. vX.X -> vX.XX
4. AltX -> REV X
5. No-Intro Convention does not define flag for Original releases
6. records with no edition would look the same way as Original edition
7. since flags with default value are omitted some entries would look rather strange -
as if record with no edition (shown) isn't Original

Gran Turismo 2 (Disc 1) (Arcade Mode) (Japan) (Original, PSone Books)
Gran Turismo 2 (Disc 2) (Gran Turismo Mode) (Japan)
Gran Turismo 2 (Disc 2) (Gran Turismo Mode) (Japan) (v1.10) (PSone Books)

Tekken (Japan)
Tekken (Japan) (v1.10) (Original, PlayStation the Best)

but fortunately ther's not too many such records.

8. 'Additional' flag would not work for records with multiple editions
if there would be a way to tell apart PSX releases further than edition, by ring for example, it would be like:

Tekken (Japan) (ring1)
Tekken (Japan) (v1.10) (Original, PlayStation the Best) (ring2)

this flag would relate to whole entry, not just Original edition,
but at least for PSX i don't think those flags would be used at all

9. no-intro do define possibility of multiple regions.
IF there would be record with multiple regions AND multiple editions
relation between those two would be unclear

10. SCPS-45xxx range releases for Asia (ther's about 500 of those)
would be absorbed by matching Japan releases becoming invisible
it means - when such release is added or removed, in .dat nothing would change.
i believe every other release would show, reprints and what-not.
in this case it's different region with different serial and it wouldn't, so i think it's wrong.

.
.
.

so maybe we could start to gradually adapt to those rules.
first 4 conditions could be implemented right now
and then it would only require changes in db parsing to output decent/actually usable .dat
the rest difficulties we would resolve with time.

Redump offers a (hidden) no-intro style dat already, except game languages are not added to it (yet?).

For people who are serious with dumping, they should refer to the online database, and not to the dat alone. :-)

Long names don't bother me, either; the *only* time I have ever run into problems with this is when I burned some GBA games to a disc, and had trouble with a few of the 3-in-1/4-in-1 packs that have full title of every game in the filename. Even then, the only reason it wouldn't work right is because I was using some crummy disc burning software that didn't have UDF support.

No-Intro handles multiple editions by adding additional tags to the filename. For example, (v1.1), (Proto), (Beta) to name a few. I'm not sure how they would handle something like a "Greatest Hits" release; cartridge-based systems don't normally have re-releases with a special label, and different versions tend to look the same on the outside.

it looks a-ok to me, except like Jackal said ther's too many letters.
all those long terms could be expressed with abbreviations.

This is what I don't like too of no-intro renaming. Until 2 years ago they used abbreviations.

still what about differentiation of serials into multiple fields?
edit:
never mind. i guess if we decide to go with No-Intro serials won't matter any longer

yes i understand that. and currently serials for Japanese records are arranged in a such way so exe name always comes first.
if by internal serial you meand exe name, then i disagree.
all this stir up is because i believe currently Japanese records are corrupted.
all other regions would get only one serial for a title - initial (and only).
Japan get as much serials as there are exe names. those exe names has nothing to do with releases. they're nothing to do with anything.
if our aim would be to have name<=>serial relation
then we would have to instead of exe names assign initial serials to all releases of same title in Japan
(thus artificially recreating the same pattern that's used in the rest of the regions)
but i honestly do not see a reason for this. in Japan serial identifies release why can't we just go with that?

yes thank's. but wouldn't you agree that ther's certain logic by which Sony assigns serials  to relases.
and everything else - internal serials (exe names? if i understand right) and serials assigned by developers do not belong there
not on the same level. it's additional information the same way ring codes or bar codes are.
and so to keep the same logic we would have to separete those to a different levels.

i agree that if that's the serial printed on covers or cd then it should relate to record not exe name.
but as you can see, i don't think serials are really neccessarry in .dat
compromise could be an additional field assignable by offline manager like Rocknroms suggested.

well ok. i'm not sure what No-Intro naming convention is but i suspect it has nothing to do with releases more like with languges.
well ok so bare minimum for record would be:
Name (Region) (version)
it's understood - the serial it's redundant information, not really needed.
so changing serial to languages it's better from point of view of database structure - it's not redundant it describes record in more detail.
but ther's problem currently - this bare minimum, given above, it is enought to keep unique records
but it's not enought to identify record on it's own without additional information from db.
adding edition or abbreviation of it to .dat would largely solve this.
unfortunatelly ther's no any more means of what i'm aware to identify records further than edition.
would rings work (like on PCE), i'd vote to include those too (or a part of a ring that's different) - but well they do not.
so edition is as far as we can get. and i believe .dat should provide those means - to get as close to original source as it's possible.
so in other word's syntax like:
Name (Region) (version1)
Name (Region) (version2)
Name (Region) (version3)
it separates record's but it's cryptic. it does not identify source of material.
imagine if we would assigne serial to each record and keep only those serials in .dat (about like Sony)
current situation is an extention of that principle.
we have serials for records within same title and region which is version.

1. what is the logic behind current assignation of serials to Japanese titles?

Internal serials + disc/box serials.

I have always been against serials in dat files, so switching to the No-Intro naming convention seems to be a nice idea for me

Dat files do not have to contain all the information from the db. Their only purpose is to identify dump, so any information which doesn't participate in making filenames unique is redundant in dat.

I also think that for v1.1 etc. dumps that perhaps it would be good to have the # or whatever's printed behind it on the disc in the filename (if such characters are possible in filenames)..

For JAP games with different printed serials for a same version maybe it's best to use the internal serial in the filename?

The current logic is that it only uses the first serial that is entered in the db (for easy identification), so if you put a different serial first it will use that one. I'm not sure what's the point of having 4 serials in a filename. It would be the same as having the barcode or publisher or languages or whatever imho. For this information we have the db.

IMHO we should either:

- only use internal serials in filenames and put any other 'external' information in the db.
- switch to the No-Intro naming convention and have new issues (like too long filenames) to keep us busy

1. what is the logic behind current assignation of serials to Japanese titles?
2. why are serials relevant at all in .dat file?
3. what is the purpose of .dat?
to provide summary of current state of db and allow people to verify their backups from originals: release with release
this way encouraging participation in project
OR
to comfort people that have downloaded some title somewhere that it match with some backup from unidentifiable original and to encourage redownload of those that don't
OR
something else?

currently as i see it database is getting corrupted. it will be difficult to correct it later.
exe names and developer serials should never have been on the same level as Sony assigned serials - it's just plain wrong.

also i don't think this should apply on other systems. for example PC hasn't got serials at all - that's fine.
in the same fashion PSX could have different syntax.

look:
Tomb Raider (U) (v1.0) [SLUS-00152]
Tomb Raider (U) (v1.1) [SLUS-00152]
Tomb Raider (U) (v1.2) [SLUS-00152]
Tomb Raider (U) (v1.3) [SLUS-00152]
serial=name. name is in english. what's the point?
ther's none.
all you see is that some images are newer than others.

but would it be like this for example:
Tomb Raider (U) (v1.0) [O]
Tomb Raider (U) (v1.1) [GH]
Tomb Raider (U) (v1.2) [GH]
Tomb Raider (U) (v1.3) [CE]
now you can see that ther's 3 releases indexed and besides ther's two possible versions in Greatest Hits.
that's much more descriptive.

Akumajou Dracula X - Gekka no Yasoukyoku (J) (v1.0) [SLPM-86023]
Akumajou Dracula X - Gekka no Yasoukyoku (J) (v1.1) [SLPM-86023]
Akumajou Dracula X - Gekka no Yasoukyoku (J) (v1.2) [SLPM-86023]
again - what's the point? it's unclear which releases were dumped, and which weren't.
in fact, seeing this, i would think either that this title is always associated with this single serial, which is wrong
or if i would know it's untrue (many don't), i would think the rest releases aren't dumped

Akumajou Dracula X - Gekka no Yasoukyoku (J) (v1.0) [O]
Akumajou Dracula X - Gekka no Yasoukyoku (J) (v1.1) [O]
Akumajou Dracula X - Gekka no Yasoukyoku (J) (v1.2) [PStB, PSOB]
two originals
and two other releases are in fact the same
so ther's actually four dumps, not three.
also you can see right away that v1.2 was dumped twice - people would trust us more.

would we handle Japanese serials correct and accept them as associated with releases it would be the same:
Akumajou Dracula X - Gekka no Yasoukyoku (J) (v1.0) [SLPM-86023]
Akumajou Dracula X - Gekka no Yasoukyoku (J) (v1.1) [SLPM-86023]
Akumajou Dracula X - Gekka no Yasoukyoku (J) (v1.2) [SLPM-86073, SLPM-87328]
but since it's different for rest of the regions those edition abbreviation would solve everything and there would be
one valid pattern at last that work for all regions, not like now.

offline renamer could be used to include or exclude certaint tags (like serial) but this concept i believe should be applied.
it's wrong to strech Japanese CDs to the USA indexing pattern - it will not work.