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   6 <title>polypaudio @PACKAGE_VERSION@</title>
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  11 <h1><a name="top">polypaudio @PACKAGE_VERSION@</a></h1>
  12
  13 <p><i>Copyright 2004 Lennart Poettering &lt;@PACKAGE_BUGREPORT@&gt;</i></p>
  14
  15 <ul class="toc">
  16     <li><a href="#license">License</a></li>
  17     <li><a href="#news">News</a></li>
  18     <li><a href="#overview">Overview</a></li>
  19     <li><a href="#status">Status</a></li>
  20     <li><a href="#documentation">Documentation</a></li>
  21     <li><a href="#requirements">Requirements</a></li>
  22     <li><a href="#installation">Installation</a></li>
  23     <li><a href="#acks">Acknowledgements</a></li>
  24     <li><a href="#download">Download</a></li>
  25 </ul>
  26
  27 <h2><a name="license">License</a></h2>
  28
  29 <p>This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
  30 modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as
  31 published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the
  32 License, or (at your option) any later version.</p>
  33
  34 <p>This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
  35 WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
  36 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU
  37 General Public License for more details.</p>
  38
  39 <p>You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
  40 along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
  41 Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.</p>
  42
  43 <h2><a name="news">News</a></h2>
  44
  45 <div class="news-date">Fri Aug 27 2004: </div> <p class="news-text"><a
  46 href="@PACKAGE_URL@polypaudio-0.3.tar.gz">Version 0.3</a> released;
  47 changes include: support for both glib 2.0 and glib 1.2, future cancellation, API updates, many fixes; relicense client library to LGPL.</p>
  48
  49 <div class="news-date">Fri Aug 20 2004: </div> <p class="news-text"><a
  50 href="@PACKAGE_URL@polypaudio-0.2.tar.gz">Version 0.2</a> released;
  51 changes include: added sample cache, introspection API, client API
  52 documentation, module autoloading, glib support, a module for intercepting X11 bell events, and much more.</p>
  53
  54 <div class="news-date">Sat Jul 17 2004: </div> <p class="news-text"><a
  55 href="@PACKAGE_URL@polypaudio-0.1.tar.gz">Version 0.1</a> released</p>
  56
  57 <h2><a name="overview">Overview</a></h2>
  58
  59 <p><tt>polypaudio</tt> is a sound server for Linux and other Unix like
  60 operating systems. It is intended to be an improved drop-in
  61 replacement for the <a
  62 href="http://www.tux.org/~ricdude/apps.html">Enlightened Sound
  63 Daemon</a> (ESOUND). In addition to the features ESOUND provides
  64 <tt>polypaudio</tt> has:</p>
  65
  66 <ul>
  67   <li>Extensible plugin architecture (by loading dynamic loadable modules with <tt>dlopen()</tt>)</li>
  68   <li>Support for more than one sink/source</li>
  69   <li>Better low latency behaviour</li>
  70   <li>Embedabble into other software (the core is available as C library)</li>
  71   <li>Completely asynchronous C API</li>
  72   <li>Simple command line interface for reconfiguring the daemon while running</li>
  73   <li>Flexible, implicit sample type conversion and resampling</li>
  74   <li>"Zero-Copy" architecture</li>
  75   <li>Module autoloading</li>
  76 </ul>
  77
  78 <p>Both the core and the client API are completely asynchronous making
  79 use of a simple main loop abstraction layer. This allows easy
  80 integration with asynchronous applications using the
  81 <tt>glib</tt>/<tt>gtk</tt> mainloop. Since the asynchronous API
  82 available through <tt>polyplib</tt> is quite difficult to use there is
  83 a simplified synchronous API wrapper <tt>polyplib-simple</tt>
  84 available. A simple main loop implementation is available as well.</p>
  85
  86 <p><tt>polypaudio</tt> is the successor of my previous, ill-fated
  87 attempt to write a sound server <a
  88 href="http://asd.sf.net/">asd</a>.</p>
  89
  90 <p>A GTK GUI manager application for polypaudio is the <a
  91 href="http://0pointer.de/lennart/projects/paman/">Polypaudio Manager</a>. There are output plugins for <a href="http://0pointer.de/lennart/projects/xmms-polyp/">XMMS</a> and <a href="http://0pointer.de/lennart/projects/libao-polyp/">libao</a>.</p>
  92
  93 <h2><a name="status">Status</a></h2>
  94
  95 <p>Version @PACKAGE_VERSION@ is quite usable. It matches and supersedes ESOUND's feature set in nearly all areas.</p>
  96
  97 <p><b>Warning:</b> polypaudio's client API and protocol are not stable
  98 yet. The client interface is still a moving target and changes from
  99 release to release. The client API's library version number is currently fixed to <tt>0.0.0</tt>.</p>
 100
 101 <h2><a name="documentation">Documentation</a></h2>
 102
 103 <p>There is some preliminary documentation available: <a
 104 href="modules.html"><tt>modules.html</tt></a>, <a
 105 href="cli.html"><tt>cli.html</tt></a>, <a
 106 href="daemon.html"><tt>daemon.html</tt></a>.</p>
 107
 108 <h3>First Steps</h3>
 109
 110 <p>Simply start the polypaudio daemon with the argument <tt>-C</tt></p>
 111
 112 <pre>polypaudio -C</pre>
 113
 114 <p>This will present you a screen like this:</p>
 115
 116 <pre>Welcome to polypaudio! Use "help" for usage information.
 117 &gt;&gt;&gt; </pre>
 118
 119 <p>Now you can issue CLI commands as described in <a
 120 href="cli.html"><tt>cli.html</tt></a>. Another way to start
 121 <tt>polypaudio</tt> is by specifying a configuration script like that one included in the distribution on the
 122 command line :</p>
 123
 124 <pre>polypaudio -F polypaudio.pa</pre>
 125
 126 <p>This will load some drivers and protocols automatically.</p>
 127
 128 <h3>Developing polypaudio Clients</h3>
 129
 130 <p>You may browse the <a href="http://www.doxygen.org/">Doxygen</a> generated <a
 131 href="http://0pointer.de/lennart/projects/polypaudio/doxygen/">programing
 132 documentation</a> for the client API. (Run <tt>make doxygen</tt> to generate this documentation from the source tree)</p>
 133
 134 <h3>Developing polypaudio Modules</h3>
 135
 136 <p>There are several reasons for writing loadable modules for polypaudio:</p>
 137
 138 <ul>
 139   <li>Device driver support in addition to ALSA/OSS</li>
 140   <li>Protocol support beyond ESOUND's protocol and the native protocol. (such as NAS or a subset of aRts)</li>
 141   <li>New programming interfaces such as XMLRPC or DBUS for controlling the daemon.</li>
 142   <li>Hooking audio event sources directly into polypaudio (similar to <tt>module-x11-bell</tt>)</li>
 143   <li>For low latency applications such as VOIP: load the VOIP core directly into polypaudio and have a slim GUI frontend to control it.</li>
 144 </ul>
 145
 146 <p>There is currently no documentation how to write loadable modules
 147 for polypaudio. <i>Read the source, Luke!</i> If you are interested in
 148 writing new modules feel free to contact the author in case you have any
 149 questions.</p>
 150
 151 <h2><a name="requirements">Requirements</a></h2>
 152
 153 <p>Currently, <tt>polypaudio</tt> is tested on Linux only. It requires an OSS or ALSA compatible soundcard.</p>
 154
 155 <p><tt>polypaudio</tt> was developed and tested on Debian GNU/Linux
 156 "testing" from July 2004, it should work on most other Linux
 157 distributions (and maybe Unix versions) since it uses GNU autoconf and
 158 GNU libtool for source code configuration and shared library
 159 management.</p>
 160
 161 <p><tt>polypaudio</tt> needs <a
 162 href="http://www.mega-nerd.com/SRC/">Secret Rabbit Code (aka
 163 <tt>libsamplerate</tt>)</a>, <a href="http://www.mega-nerd.com/libsndfile"><tt>libsndfile</tt></a>, <a
 164 href="http://www.alsa-project.org/">alsa-lib</a> and <a href="http://www.gtk.org/">GLIB</a>. (The latter is required for building the GLIB main loop integration module only.)</p>
 165
 166 <h2><a name="installation">Installation</a></h2>
 167
 168 <p>As this package is made with the GNU autotools you should run
 169 <tt>./configure</tt> inside the distribution directory for configuring
 170 the source tree. After that you should run <tt>make</tt> for
 171 compilation and <tt>make install</tt> (as root) for installation of
 172 <tt>polypaudio</tt>.</p>
 173
 174 <h2><a name="acks">Acknowledgements</a></h2>
 175
 176 <p>Eric B. Mitchell for writing ESOUND</p>
 177
 178 <h2><a name="download">Download</a></h2>
 179
 180 <p>The newest release is always available from <a href="@PACKAGE_URL@">@PACKAGE_URL@</a></p>
 181
 182 <p>The current release is <a href="@PACKAGE_URL@polypaudio-@PACKAGE_VERSION@.tar.gz">@PACKAGE_VERSION@</a></p>
 183
 184 <p>Get <tt>polypaudio</tt>'s development sources from the <a href="http://subversion.tigris.org/">Subversion</a> <a href="https://seth.intheinter.net:8081/svn/polypaudio/">repository</a>. (<a href="http://0pointer.de/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/?root=polypaudio">viewcvs</a>)</p>
 185
 186 <p>If you want to be notified whenever I release a new version of this software use the subscription feature of <a href="http://freshmeat.net/projects/polypaudio/">Freshmeat</a>.</p>
 187
 188 <hr/>
 189 <address class="grey">Lennart Poettering &lt;@PACKAGE_BUGREPORT@&gt;, August 2004</address>
 190 <div class="grey"><i>$Id$</i></div>
 191
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