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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 20 2004: </div> <p class="news-text"><a
  46 href="@PACKAGE_URL@polypaudio-0.2.tar.gz">Version 0.2</a> released;
  47 changes include: added sample cache, introspection API, client API
  48 documentation, module autoloading, glib support, a module for intercepting X11 bell events, and much more.</p>
  49
  50 <div class="news-date">Sat Jul 17 2004: </div> <p class="news-text"><a
  51 href="@PACKAGE_URL@polypaudio-0.1.tar.gz">Version 0.1</a> released</p>
  52
  53 <h2><a name="overview">Overview</a></h2>
  54
  55 <p><tt>polypaudio</tt> is a sound server for Linux and other Unix like
  56 operating systems. It is intended to be an improved drop-in
  57 replacement for the <a
  58 href="http://www.tux.org/~ricdude/apps.html">Enlightened Sound
  59 Daemon</a> (ESOUND). In addition to the features ESOUND provides
  60 <tt>polypaudio</tt> has:</p>
  61
  62 <ul>
  63   <li>Extensible plugin architecture (by loading dynamic loadable modules with <tt>dlopen()</tt>)</li>
  64   <li>Support for more than one sink/source</li>
  65   <li>Better low latency behaviour</li>
  66   <li>Embedabble into other software (the core is available as C library)</li>
  67   <li>Completely asynchronous C API</li>
  68   <li>Simple command line interface for reconfiguring the daemon while running</li>
  69   <li>Flexible, implicit sample type conversion and resampling</li>
  70   <li>"Zero-Copy" architecture</li>
  71   <li>Module autoloading</li>
  72 </ul>
  73
  74 <p>Both the core and the client API are completely asynchronous making
  75 use of a simple main loop abstraction layer. This allows easy
  76 integration with asynchronous applications using the
  77 <tt>glib</tt>/<tt>gtk</tt> mainloop. Since the asynchronous API
  78 available through <tt>polyplib</tt> is quite difficult to use there is
  79 a simplified synchronous API wrapper <tt>polyplib-simple</tt>
  80 available. A simple main loop implementation is available as well.</p>
  81
  82 <p><tt>polypaudio</tt> is the successor of my previous, ill-fated
  83 attempt to write a sound server <a
  84 href="http://asd.sf.net/">asd</a>.</p>
  85
  86 <p>A GTK GUI manager application for polypaudio is the <a
  87 href="http://0pointer.de/projects/paman/">Polypaudio Manager</a>.</p>
  88
  89 <h2><a name="status">Status</a></h2>
  90
  91 <p>Version @PACKAGE_VERSION@ is quite usable. It matches and supersedes ESOUND's feature set in nearly all areas.</p>
  92
  93 <h2><a name="documentation">Documentation</a></h2>
  94
  95 <p>There is some preliminary documentation available: <a
  96 href="modules.html"><tt>modules.html</tt></a>, <a
  97 href="cli.html"><tt>cli.html</tt></a>, <a
  98 href="daemon.html"><tt>daemon.html</tt></a>.</p>
  99
 100 <p>You may browse the <a href="http://www.doxygen.org/">Doxygen</a> generated <a
 101 href="http://0pointer.de/lennart/projects/polypaudio/doxygen/">programing
 102 documentation</a> for the client API. (Run <tt>make doxygen</tt> to generate this documentation from the source tree)</p>
 103
 104 <h3>First Steps</h3>
 105
 106 <p>Simply start the polypaudio daemon with the argument <tt>-C</tt></p>
 107
 108 <pre>polypaudio -C</pre>
 109
 110 <p>This will present you a screen like this:</p>
 111
 112 <pre>Welcome to polypaudio! Use "help" for usage information.
 113 &gt;&gt;&gt; </pre>
 114
 115 <p>Now you can issue CLI commands as described in <a
 116 href="cli.html"><tt>cli.html</tt></a>. Another way to start
 117 <tt>polypaudio</tt> is by specifying a configuration script on the
 118 command line like that one included in the distribution:</p>
 119
 120 <pre>polypaudio -F polypaudio.pa</pre>
 121
 122 <p>This will load some drivers and protocols automatically.</p>
 123
 124 <h2><a name="requirements">Requirements</a></h2>
 125
 126 <p>Currently, <tt>polypaudio</tt> is tested on Linux only. It requires an OSS or ALSA compatible soundcard.</p>
 127
 128 <p><tt>polypaudio</tt> was developed and tested on Debian GNU/Linux
 129 "testing" from July 2004, it should work on most other Linux
 130 distributions (and maybe Unix versions) since it uses GNU autoconf and
 131 GNU libtool for source code configuration and shared library
 132 management.</p>
 133
 134 <p><tt>polypaudio</tt> needs <a
 135 href="http://www.mega-nerd.com/SRC/">Secret Rabbit Code (aka
 136 <tt>libsamplerate</tt>)</a>, <a href="http://www.mega-nerd.com/SND"><tt>libsndfile</tt></a>, <a
 137 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>
 138
 139 <h2><a name="installation">Installation</a></h2>
 140
 141 <p>As this package is made with the GNU autotools you should run
 142 <tt>./configure</tt> inside the distribution directory for configuring
 143 the source tree. After that you should run <tt>make</tt> for
 144 compilation and <tt>make install</tt> (as root) for installation of
 145 <tt>polypaudio</tt>.</p>
 146
 147 <h2><a name="acks">Acknowledgements</a></h2>
 148
 149 <p>Eric B. Mitchell for writing ESOUND</p>
 150
 151 <h2><a name="download">Download</a></h2>
 152
 153 <p>The newest release is always available from <a href="@PACKAGE_URL@">@PACKAGE_URL@</a></p>
 154
 155 <p>The current release is <a href="@PACKAGE_URL@polypaudio-@PACKAGE_VERSION@.tar.gz">@PACKAGE_VERSION@</a></p>
 156
 157 <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>
 158
 159 <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>
 160
 161 <hr/>
 162 <address class="grey">Lennart Poettering &lt;@PACKAGE_BUGREPORT@&gt;, August 2004</address>
 163 <div class="grey"><i>$Id$</i></div>
 164
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