Overview
When submitting a job to the encoding server, client programs (Wagdisc and Wagfile) send a set of data describing that job. Some of this data is set automatically by the appropriate client program, but the rest is entered by the user in the form of a 'details file'.
At some point the client program will invite you to edit the details file, and if you say yes the file will open in your normal editor. Once you have made the changes you want, simply save the file and exit.
Format
The details file consists of a number of sections, each one describing one job for the server. A section is started with a section header in the form of [section-name]. The section name will be set by the client program. The actual name chosen is unimportant and you could, if you felt so moved, change a section name and it wouldn't affect the job, provided that the name was still unique.
Following a section header is a set of section data. This is in the form of key=value. The 'key' can be anything consisting of letters, numbers and the dash symbol. However, certain keys are used for certain things. Some of the them are obvious such as title which defines the title for the file.
The purpose of some keys is pre-specified (such as track), the rest are used to set metadata in the file and which ones are 'connected' depends on the configuration of the server. You can look at the list of default meta-data for some examples.
If an entire section, i.e. header and data, is deleted that job will not be submitted to the server.
Default values
Key/value pairs placed before the first section header make up the default section. These settings will apply to all jobs unless the job section also specifies that key. For example, consider a details file of three jobs, all by the same artist. If tracks 2 and 3 are live recordings but track 1 isn't, the details file may look like:
version=Live
[track1]
title=Bingalinga bong
track=1
version=
[track2]
title=Jingley jingley bells
track=2
[track3]
title=Patta pat patta pat
track=3
From the point of view of a client program, a default value is every bit as good as a section-specified one. So when I say "Each job in the details file must contain a foo key", it's equally valid to have foo specified in the default section and applied everywhere.