Cue sheets allow an audio cd to be stored in a single file, with split points and metadata stored in the cue sheet, as a seperate file (.cue) or in an embedded metadata block (e.g. vorbiscomment).  This provides many benefits for numerous niche applications, such as storing classical music, archiving exact copies of physical cd's (including gaps and pre/post-track audio), eliminating the addition of gaps between tracks, and the simplification of organization and storage.

Currently the K3b seems to be fully cue sheet aware; able to rip cd's to this format, burn this format back to a physical cd, and able to split and transcode this format to other formats (such as the common .mp3 files most users generally use).

There are gtk-friendly rippers available (Rubyripper, for example) that can create these flac image files with cue sheets, but due to gstreamer's inability to handle them, there is currently no simple, gnome-friendly, gui means to write these files to cd, or to split and transcode them to other formats.  Were the GStreamer framework made able to handle this setup, a user could then rip a cd with Rubyripper to this format, playback the tracks with a player like Rhythmbox, write the file back to a physical cd with Brasero or GnomeBaker (thus recreating the original cd), and split and transcode the cd to another format with separate files with an application like SoundConverter (for playback on a portable player).

This would greatly simplify things, and would be a great help to many users.  Thanks for your time and consideration.

For information on the cue sheet:
http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=Cue_sheet
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cue_sheet_(computing)

Here's an example of a cue sheet:

REM GENRE Gospel
REM DATE 2007
REM COMMENT "Rubyripper 0.5.5"
PERFORMER "Caedmon's Call"
TITLE "Overdressed"
FILE "Overdressed.flac" WAVE
  TRACK 01 AUDIO
    TITLE "Trouble"
    PERFORMER "Caedmon's Call"
    INDEX 01 00:00:00
  TRACK 02 AUDIO
    TITLE "Need Your Love"
    PERFORMER "Caedmon's Call"
    INDEX 01 03:36:39
  TRACK 03 AUDIO
    TITLE "Sacred"
    PERFORMER "Caedmon's Call"
    INDEX 01 06:46:25
  TRACK 04 AUDIO
    TITLE "Expectations"
    PERFORMER "Caedmon's Call"
    INDEX 01 10:11:46
  TRACK 05 AUDIO
    TITLE "There Is A Reason"
    PERFORMER "Caedmon's Call"
    INDEX 01 13:33:15
  TRACK 06 AUDIO
    TITLE "Share In The Blame"
    PERFORMER "Caedmon's Call"
    INDEX 01 17:19:57
  TRACK 07 AUDIO
    TITLE "Hold The Light"
    PERFORMER "Caedmon's Call"
    INDEX 01 20:59:64
  TRACK 08 AUDIO
    TITLE "Two Weeks In Africa"
    PERFORMER "Caedmon's Call"
    INDEX 01 27:00:31
  TRACK 09 AUDIO
    TITLE "Love Grows Love"
    PERFORMER "Caedmon's Call"
    INDEX 01 30:44:57
  TRACK 10 AUDIO
    TITLE "All Across The Western World"
    PERFORMER "Caedmon's Call"
    INDEX 01 34:44:02
  TRACK 11 AUDIO
    TITLE "Always Been There"
    PERFORMER "Caedmon's Call"
    INDEX 01 37:44:72
  TRACK 12 AUDIO
    TITLE "Start Again"
    PERFORMER "Caedmon's Call"
    INDEX 01 40:22:48