I agree with you that the audio signal on a CD is continuous, like an LP or a cassette tape. And I agree with you that the CD has a Table of Contents that has addresses to that continuous audio signal. And I agree that the Table of Contents uses the terms “Track” and “Index”.
But I think we might be getting tangled in the difference between meaning of the word “track”. There is one meaning, as understood by Artists making albums and fans listening to albums. That is, the “track” is the part with audible sound, and the “gap” is silence between the audible sound. The silence is not the “track”, it separates tracks. Then there is a second meaning, as understood by people reading the CD format specifications and using fancy ripping software. There, every second audio on the CD is part of a “track” in the TOC.
Do you agree that Artists and mastering pros treat the audio content between index 0 and 1 within a CD TOC’s “track” differently than the other audio content? For instance, when you tell a physical CD player to go to the “start of a track”, it goes to the address of index 1, not the address of index 0? Doesn’t that indicate to you that CD player treats the content between indexes 0 and 1 differently?
I am advocating that we add metadata to describe the common-sense, listener meaning of “track” and “gap”. I’m not talking about the technical CD TOC meaning of “track”. Especially, I am in favour of a way of saying with metadata, “there is no gap here”.