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  12 <h1>Frequently Asked Questions</h1>
  13
  14 <ol>
  15   <li><p><b>How does Polypaudio compare with ESOUND/aRts/NAS?</b></p>
  16
  17   <p>Polypaudio is sound daemon similar to ESOUND and NAS, but much more
  18   powerful. aRts is a realtime-synthesizer-cum-sound-server, i.e. it
  19   does much more than Polypaudio. However, I believe that Polypaudio
  20   does what it does much better than any other free sound server.</p>
  21   </li>
  22
  23   <li><p><b>What about ESOUND compatibility?</b></p>
  24   <p>Polypaudio is a drop in replacement for ESOUND. That means: you can
  25   load a esound compatibility module which implements an ESOUND
  26   compatible protocol which allows you to use most of the classic ESOUND
  27   compatible programs (including the command line programs like
  28   <tt>esdcat</tt>).</p>
  29   </li>
  30
  31   <li><p><b>Is Polypaudio a GNOME program?</b></p>
  32   <p>No, Polypaudio has no dependency on GNOME/GTK/GLIB. All it requires
  33   is a UNIX-like operating system and very few dependency
  34   libraries. However, the accompanying GUI tools are writen with
  35   gtkmm, i.e. require both GLIB and GTK.</p></li>
  36
  37   <li><p><b>Can I integrate Polypaudio in my GLIB/GTK/GNOME application?</b></p>
  38   <p>Yes! Polypaudio comes with a GLIB main loop adapter. You can embed
  39   both the client library and the daemon (!) into your GLIB based
  40   application.</p></li>
  41
  42   <li><p><b>Can I integrate Polypaudio in my Qt/KDE application?</b></p>
  43   <p>Yes! Polypaudio uses a main loop abstraction layer that allows you
  44   to integrate Polypaudio in any program that supports main
  45   loops. Unfortunately there is no adapter for Qt publicly available yet.</p></li>
  46
  47   <li><p><b>I want to write a new driver for Polypaudio, are there any docs?</b></p>
  48   <p>Currently, only the client API is documented with doxygen. Read
  49   the source and base your work on a simple module like
  50   <tt>module-pipe-sink</tt>.</p></li>
  51
  52   <li><p><b>What about compatibility with NAS?</b></p>
  53   <p>Is not available (yet?). It is doable, but noone has implemented it yet.</p></li>
  54
  55   <li><p><b>What about compatibility with aRts?</b></p>
  56   <p>Is not available. Since aRts is as synthesizer application you'd have to
  57   reimplement very much code for Polypaudio. It should be easy to
  58   implement limited support for <tt>libartsc</tt> based
  59   applications. Noone has done this yet. It is probably a better idea to
  60   run <tt>arts</tt> on top of Polypaudio (through a polypaudio driver
  61   for aRts, which nobody has written yet). Another solution would be to
  62   embed Polypaudio in the aRts process.</p></li>
  63
  64   <li><p><b>I often hear noises when playing back with Polypaudio, what can I do?</b></p>
  65   <p>There are to possible solutions: either make the polypaudio
  66   binary SUID root (<tt>chmod u+s /usr/bin/polypaudio</tt>) and run it
  67   with argument <tt>--high-priority=1</tt> or increase the fragment sizes of the audio
  68   drivers. The former will allow Polypaudio to activate
  69   <tt>SCHED_FIFO</tt> high priority scheduling (root rights are dropped
  70   immediately after this) Keep in mind that is a potential security hole!</p></li>
  71
  72   <li><p><b>I only want to run polypaudio when it is needed, how do I do this?</b></p>
  73
  74   <p>Set <tt>autospawn = yes</tt> in <tt>client.conf</tt>. That
  75 configuration file may be found either in <tt>/etc/polypaudio/</tt> or
  76 in <tt>~/.polypaudio/</tt>.</p></li>
  77
  78   <li><p><b>How do I list all polypaudio modules installed?</b></p>
  79
  80    <p><tt>polypaudio --dump-modules</tt></p>
  81
  82    <p>Add <tt>-v</tt> for terse usage instructions.</p>
  83
  84    <li><p><b>What environment does polypaudio care about?</b></p>
  85
  86 <p>The client honors: <tt>POLYP_SINK</tt> (default sink to connect to), <tt>POLYP_SOURCE</tt> (default source to connect to), <tt>POLYP_SERVER</tt> (default server to connect to, like <tt>ESPEAKER</tt>), <tt>POLYP_BINARY</tt> (the binary to start when autospawning a daemon), <tt>POLYP_CLIENTCONFIG</tt> (path to the client configuration file).</p>
  87
  88 <p>The daemon honors: <tt>POLYP_SCRIPT</tt> (default CLI script file run after startup), <tt>POLYP_CONFIG</tt> (default daemon configuration file), <tt>POLYP_DLPATH</tt> (colon separated list of paths where to look for modules)</p></li>
  89
  90 </ol>
  91
  92 <hr/>
  93 <address class="grey">Lennart Poettering &lt;@PACKAGE_BUGREPORT@&gt;, September 2004</address>
  94 <div class="grey"><i>$Id$</i></div>
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