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6 <title>polypaudio @PACKAGE_VERSION@
</title>
7 <link rel=
"stylesheet" type=
"text/css" href=
"style.css" />
11 <h1><a name=
"top">polypaudio @PACKAGE_VERSION@
</a></h1>
13 <p><i>Copyright
2004 Lennart Poettering
<@PACKAGE_BUGREPORT@
></i></p>
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>
27 <h2><a name=
"license">License
</a></h2>
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>
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>
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>
43 <p><i>Exception: The client libraries are licensed under LGPL, the Lesser GNU General Plublic License.
</i></p>
45 <h2><a name=
"news">News
</a></h2>
47 <div class=
"news-date">Mon Sep
20 2004:
</div> <p class=
"news-text"><a
48 href=
"@PACKAGE_URL@polypaudio-0.5.tar.gz">Version
0.5</a> released;
49 changes include: extensive API improvements, new module
50 <tt>module-combine
</tt> for combining multiple sound cards into one,
51 gcc
2.95 compatibility, configuration files, add
"lazy" samples,
52 support for source and network latency measurements, add
53 <tt>module-pipe-source
</tt>, many other fixes and improvements.
</p>
55 <div class=
"news-date">Wed Sep
8 2004:
</div> <p class=
"news-text"><a
56 href=
"@PACKAGE_URL@polypaudio-0.4.tar.gz">Version
0.4</a> released;
57 changes include: daemon auto spawning, support for
<tt>SCHED_FIFO
</tt> scheduling, three new modules, proper logging, CPU load watchdog, many fixes.
</p>
59 <div class=
"news-date">Fri Aug
27 2004:
</div> <p class=
"news-text"><a
60 href=
"@PACKAGE_URL@polypaudio-0.3.tar.gz">Version
0.3</a> released;
61 changes include: support for both glib
2.0 and glib
1.2, future cancellation, API updates, many fixes, relicense client library to LGPL.
</p>
63 <div class=
"news-date">Fri Aug
20 2004:
</div> <p class=
"news-text"><a
64 href=
"@PACKAGE_URL@polypaudio-0.2.tar.gz">Version
0.2</a> released;
65 changes include: added sample cache, introspection API, client API
66 documentation, module autoloading, glib support, a module for intercepting X11 bell events, and much more.
</p>
68 <div class=
"news-date">Sat Jul
17 2004:
</div> <p class=
"news-text"><a
69 href=
"@PACKAGE_URL@polypaudio-0.1.tar.gz">Version
0.1</a> released
</p>
71 <h2><a name=
"overview">Overview
</a></h2>
73 <p><tt>polypaudio
</tt> is a sound server for Linux and other Unix like
74 operating systems. It is intended to be an improved drop-in
75 replacement for the
<a
76 href=
"http://www.tux.org/~ricdude/apps.html">Enlightened Sound
77 Daemon
</a> (ESOUND). In addition to the features ESOUND provides
78 <tt>polypaudio
</tt> has:
</p>
81 <li>Extensible plugin architecture (by loading dynamic loadable modules with
<tt>dlopen()
</tt>)
</li>
82 <li>Support for more than one sink/source
</li>
83 <li>Better low latency behaviour
</li>
84 <li>Embedabble into other software (the core is available as C library)
</li>
85 <li>Completely asynchronous C API
</li>
86 <li>Simple command line interface for reconfiguring the daemon while running
</li>
87 <li>Flexible, implicit sample type conversion and resampling
</li>
88 <li>"Zero-Copy" architecture
</li>
89 <li>Module autoloading
</li>
90 <li>Very accurate latency measurement for playback and recordin.
</li>
91 <li>May be used to combine multiple sound cards to one (with sample rate adjustment)
</li>
94 <p>Both the core and the client API are completely asynchronous making
95 use of a simple main loop abstraction layer. This allows easy
96 integration with asynchronous applications using the
97 <tt>glib
</tt>/
<tt>gtk
</tt> mainloop. Since the asynchronous API
98 available through
<tt>polyplib
</tt> is quite difficult to use there is
99 a simplified synchronous API wrapper
<tt>polyplib-simple
</tt>
100 available. A simple main loop implementation is available as well.
</p>
102 <p>The following modules are currently available:
</p>
105 <li><tt>module-oss
</tt>: driver for Open Sound System audio sinks and sources.
</li>
106 <li><tt>module-oss-mmap
</tt>: same as above, but uses
<tt>mmap()
</tt> access to the audio buffer. Not as compatible
</li>
107 <li><tt>module-alsa-sink
</tt>,
<tt>module-alsa-source
</tt>: drivers for ALSA sinks and sources
</li>
108 <li><tt>module-pipe-sink
</tt>,
<tt>module-pipe-source
</tt>: demonstration module providing UNIX fifos backed sinks/sources
</li>
109 <li><tt>module-combine
</tt>: combine multiple sinks into one.
</li>
110 <li><tt>module-sine
</tt>: a sine generate sink input.
</li>
111 <li><tt>module-x11-bell
</tt>: play a sample from the sample cache on every X11 bell event.
</li>
112 <li><tt>module-esound-protocol-tcp
</tt>,
<tt>module-esound-protocol-unix
</tt>: ESOUND compatibility modules (for TCP/IP resp. UNIX domain sockets)
</li>
113 <li><tt>module-native-protocol-tcp
</tt>,
<tt>module-native-protocol-unix
</tt>: Native polypaudio protocol (for TCP/IP resp. UNIX domain sockets)
</li>
114 <li><tt>module-simple-protocol-tcp
</tt>,
<tt>module-simple-protocol-unix
</tt>: Simplistic protocol for playback/capture for usage with tools like
<tt>netcat
</tt> (for TCP/IP resp. UNIX domain sockets)
</li>
115 <li><tt>module-cli-protocol-tcp
</tt>,
<tt>module-cli-protocol-unix
</tt>,
<tt>module-cli
</tt>: Expose polypaudio's internals whith a simple command line interface. (for TCP/IP resp. UNIX domain sockets resp. STDIN/STDOUT)
</li>
118 <p><tt>polypaudio
</tt> is the successor of my previous, ill-fated
119 attempt to write a sound server,
<a
120 href=
"http://asd.sf.net/">asd
</a>.
</p>
122 <p>A GTK GUI manager application for polypaudio is the
<a
123 href=
"http://0pointer.de/lennart/projects/paman/">Polypaudio
124 Manager
</a>. Another GTK GUI tool for Polypaudio is the
<a
125 href=
"http://0pointer.de/lennart/projects/pavumeter">Polypaudio Volume
126 Meter
</a>. There are output plugins for
<a
127 href=
"http://0pointer.de/lennart/projects/xmms-polyp/">XMMS
</a> and
<a
128 href=
"http://0pointer.de/lennart/projects/libao-polyp/">libao
</a>. Drivers
129 for
<a href=
"http://gstreamer.net">gstreamer
</a> and
<a
130 href=
"http://mplayerhq.hu">MPlayer
</a> will be released shortly.
</p>
132 <h2><a name=
"status">Status
</a></h2>
134 <p>Version @PACKAGE_VERSION@ is quite usable. It matches and supersedes ESOUND's feature set in nearly all areas.
</p>
136 <p><b>Warning:
</b> polypaudio's client API and protocol are not stable
137 yet. The client interface is still a moving target and changes from
138 release to release. The client API's library version number is currently fixed to
<tt>0.0.0</tt>.
</p>
140 <h2><a name=
"documentation">Documentation
</a></h2>
142 <p>There is some preliminary documentation available:
<a
143 href=
"modules.html"><tt>modules.html
</tt></a>,
<a
144 href=
"cli.html"><tt>cli.html
</tt></a>,
<a
145 href=
"daemon.html"><tt>daemon.html
</tt></a>,
<a href=
"FAQ.html"><tt>FAQ.html
</tt></a>, .
</p>
149 <p>Simply start the polypaudio daemon with the argument
<tt>-nC
</tt></p>
151 <pre>polypaudio -nC
</pre>
153 <p>This will present you a screen like this:
</p>
155 <pre>Welcome to polypaudio! Use
"help" for usage information.
158 <p>Now you can issue CLI commands as described in
<a
159 href=
"cli.html"><tt>cli.html
</tt></a>. Another way to start
160 <tt>polypaudio
</tt> is by specifying a configuration script like that one included in the distribution on the
163 <pre>polypaudio -nF polypaudio.pa
</pre>
165 <p>This will load some drivers and protocols automatically.
</p>
167 <p>The best idea is to configure your daemon in
<tt>/etc/polypaudio/daemon.conf
</tt> and
<tt>/etc/polypaudio/default.pa
</tt> and to run polypaudio without any arguments.
</p>
169 <h3>Developing polypaudio Clients
</h3>
171 <p>You may browse the
<a href=
"http://www.doxygen.org/">Doxygen
</a> generated
<a
172 href=
"http://0pointer.de/lennart/projects/polypaudio/doxygen/">programing
173 documentation
</a> for the client API. (Run
<tt>make doxygen
</tt> to generate this documentation from the source tree)
</p>
175 <h3>Developing polypaudio Modules
</h3>
177 <p>There are several reasons for writing loadable modules for polypaudio:
</p>
180 <li>Device driver support in addition to ALSA/OSS
</li>
181 <li>Protocol support beyond ESOUND's protocol and the native protocol. (such as NAS or a subset of aRts)
</li>
182 <li>New programming interfaces such as XMLRPC or DBUS for controlling the daemon.
</li>
183 <li>Hooking audio event sources directly into polypaudio (similar to
<tt>module-x11-bell
</tt>)
</li>
184 <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>
187 <p>There is currently no documentation how to write loadable modules
188 for polypaudio.
<i>Read the source, Luke!
</i> If you are interested in
189 writing new modules feel free to contact the author in case you have any
192 <h2><a name=
"requirements">Requirements
</a></h2>
194 <p>Currently,
<tt>polypaudio
</tt> is tested on Linux only. It requires an OSS or ALSA compatible soundcard.
</p>
196 <p><tt>polypaudio
</tt> was developed and tested on Debian GNU/Linux
197 "testing" from July
2004, it should work on most other Linux
198 distributions (and maybe Unix versions) since it uses GNU autoconf and
199 GNU libtool for source code configuration and shared library
202 <p><tt>polypaudio
</tt> needs
<a
203 href=
"http://www.mega-nerd.com/SRC/">Secret Rabbit Code (aka
204 <tt>libsamplerate
</tt>)
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.mega-nerd.com/libsndfile"><tt>libsndfile
</tt></a>,
<a
205 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>
207 <h2><a name=
"installation">Installation
</a></h2>
209 <p>As this package is made with the GNU autotools you should run
210 <tt>./configure
</tt> inside the distribution directory for configuring
211 the source tree. After that you should run
<tt>make
</tt> for
212 compilation and
<tt>make install
</tt> (as root) for installation of
213 <tt>polypaudio
</tt>.
</p>
215 <h2><a name=
"acks">Acknowledgements
</a></h2>
217 <p>Eric B. Mitchell for writing ESOUND
</p>
219 <h2><a name=
"download">Download
</a></h2>
221 <p>The newest release is always available from
<a href=
"@PACKAGE_URL@">@PACKAGE_URL@
</a></p>
223 <p>The current release is
<a href=
"@PACKAGE_URL@polypaudio-@PACKAGE_VERSION@.tar.gz">@PACKAGE_VERSION@
</a></p>
225 <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>
227 <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>
229 <p><b>New!
</b> There is a general discussion
<a href=
"https://seth.intheinter.net/mailman/listinfo/polypaudio-discuss">mailing list for polypaudio
</a> available.
</p>
232 <address class=
"grey">Lennart Poettering
<@PACKAGE_BUGREPORT@
>, September
2004</address>
233 <div class=
"grey"><i>$Id$
</i></div>