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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">Wed Sep
8 2004:
</div> <p class=
"news-text"><a
48 href=
"@PACKAGE_URL@polypaudio-0.4.tar.gz">Version
0.4</a> released;
49 changes include: daemon auto spawning, support for
<tt>SCHED_FIFO
</tt> scheduling, three new modules, proper logging, CPU load watchdog, many fixes.
</p>
51 <div class=
"news-date">Fri Aug
27 2004:
</div> <p class=
"news-text"><a
52 href=
"@PACKAGE_URL@polypaudio-0.3.tar.gz">Version
0.3</a> released;
53 changes include: support for both glib
2.0 and glib
1.2, future cancellation, API updates, many fixes, relicense client library to LGPL.
</p>
55 <div class=
"news-date">Fri Aug
20 2004:
</div> <p class=
"news-text"><a
56 href=
"@PACKAGE_URL@polypaudio-0.2.tar.gz">Version
0.2</a> released;
57 changes include: added sample cache, introspection API, client API
58 documentation, module autoloading, glib support, a module for intercepting X11 bell events, and much more.
</p>
60 <div class=
"news-date">Sat Jul
17 2004:
</div> <p class=
"news-text"><a
61 href=
"@PACKAGE_URL@polypaudio-0.1.tar.gz">Version
0.1</a> released
</p>
63 <h2><a name=
"overview">Overview
</a></h2>
65 <p><tt>polypaudio
</tt> is a sound server for Linux and other Unix like
66 operating systems. It is intended to be an improved drop-in
67 replacement for the
<a
68 href=
"http://www.tux.org/~ricdude/apps.html">Enlightened Sound
69 Daemon
</a> (ESOUND). In addition to the features ESOUND provides
70 <tt>polypaudio
</tt> has:
</p>
73 <li>Extensible plugin architecture (by loading dynamic loadable modules with
<tt>dlopen()
</tt>)
</li>
74 <li>Support for more than one sink/source
</li>
75 <li>Better low latency behaviour
</li>
76 <li>Embedabble into other software (the core is available as C library)
</li>
77 <li>Completely asynchronous C API
</li>
78 <li>Simple command line interface for reconfiguring the daemon while running
</li>
79 <li>Flexible, implicit sample type conversion and resampling
</li>
80 <li>"Zero-Copy" architecture
</li>
81 <li>Module autoloading
</li>
84 <p>Both the core and the client API are completely asynchronous making
85 use of a simple main loop abstraction layer. This allows easy
86 integration with asynchronous applications using the
87 <tt>glib
</tt>/
<tt>gtk
</tt> mainloop. Since the asynchronous API
88 available through
<tt>polyplib
</tt> is quite difficult to use there is
89 a simplified synchronous API wrapper
<tt>polyplib-simple
</tt>
90 available. A simple main loop implementation is available as well.
</p>
92 <p><tt>polypaudio
</tt> is the successor of my previous, ill-fated
93 attempt to write a sound server
<a
94 href=
"http://asd.sf.net/">asd
</a>.
</p>
96 <p>A GTK GUI manager application for polypaudio is the
<a
97 href=
"http://0pointer.de/lennart/projects/paman/">Polypaudio
98 Manager
</a>. Another GTK GUI tool for Polypaudio is the
<a href=
"http://0pointer.de/lennart/projects/pavumeter">Polypaudio Volume Meter
</a>. There are output plugins for
<a
99 href=
"http://0pointer.de/lennart/projects/xmms-polyp/">XMMS
</a> and
<a
100 href=
"http://0pointer.de/lennart/projects/libao-polyp/">libao
</a>.
</p>
102 <h2><a name=
"status">Status
</a></h2>
104 <p>Version @PACKAGE_VERSION@ is quite usable. It matches and supersedes ESOUND's feature set in nearly all areas.
</p>
106 <p><b>Warning:
</b> polypaudio's client API and protocol are not stable
107 yet. The client interface is still a moving target and changes from
108 release to release. The client API's library version number is currently fixed to
<tt>0.0.0</tt>.
</p>
110 <h2><a name=
"documentation">Documentation
</a></h2>
112 <p>There is some preliminary documentation available:
<a
113 href=
"modules.html"><tt>modules.html
</tt></a>,
<a
114 href=
"cli.html"><tt>cli.html
</tt></a>,
<a
115 href=
"daemon.html"><tt>daemon.html
</tt></a>,
<a href=
"FAQ.html"><tt>FAQ.html
</tt></a>, .
</p>
119 <p>Simply start the polypaudio daemon with the argument
<tt>-C
</tt></p>
121 <pre>polypaudio -C
</pre>
123 <p>This will present you a screen like this:
</p>
125 <pre>Welcome to polypaudio! Use
"help" for usage information.
128 <p>Now you can issue CLI commands as described in
<a
129 href=
"cli.html"><tt>cli.html
</tt></a>. Another way to start
130 <tt>polypaudio
</tt> is by specifying a configuration script like that one included in the distribution on the
133 <pre>polypaudio -F polypaudio.pa
</pre>
135 <p>This will load some drivers and protocols automatically.
</p>
137 <h3>Developing polypaudio Clients
</h3>
139 <p>You may browse the
<a href=
"http://www.doxygen.org/">Doxygen
</a> generated
<a
140 href=
"http://0pointer.de/lennart/projects/polypaudio/doxygen/">programing
141 documentation
</a> for the client API. (Run
<tt>make doxygen
</tt> to generate this documentation from the source tree)
</p>
143 <h3>Developing polypaudio Modules
</h3>
145 <p>There are several reasons for writing loadable modules for polypaudio:
</p>
148 <li>Device driver support in addition to ALSA/OSS
</li>
149 <li>Protocol support beyond ESOUND's protocol and the native protocol. (such as NAS or a subset of aRts)
</li>
150 <li>New programming interfaces such as XMLRPC or DBUS for controlling the daemon.
</li>
151 <li>Hooking audio event sources directly into polypaudio (similar to
<tt>module-x11-bell
</tt>)
</li>
152 <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>
155 <p>There is currently no documentation how to write loadable modules
156 for polypaudio.
<i>Read the source, Luke!
</i> If you are interested in
157 writing new modules feel free to contact the author in case you have any
160 <h2><a name=
"requirements">Requirements
</a></h2>
162 <p>Currently,
<tt>polypaudio
</tt> is tested on Linux only. It requires an OSS or ALSA compatible soundcard.
</p>
164 <p><tt>polypaudio
</tt> was developed and tested on Debian GNU/Linux
165 "testing" from July
2004, it should work on most other Linux
166 distributions (and maybe Unix versions) since it uses GNU autoconf and
167 GNU libtool for source code configuration and shared library
170 <p><tt>polypaudio
</tt> needs
<a
171 href=
"http://www.mega-nerd.com/SRC/">Secret Rabbit Code (aka
172 <tt>libsamplerate
</tt>)
</a>,
<a href=
"http://www.mega-nerd.com/libsndfile"><tt>libsndfile
</tt></a>,
<a
173 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>
175 <h2><a name=
"installation">Installation
</a></h2>
177 <p>As this package is made with the GNU autotools you should run
178 <tt>./configure
</tt> inside the distribution directory for configuring
179 the source tree. After that you should run
<tt>make
</tt> for
180 compilation and
<tt>make install
</tt> (as root) for installation of
181 <tt>polypaudio
</tt>.
</p>
183 <h2><a name=
"acks">Acknowledgements
</a></h2>
185 <p>Eric B. Mitchell for writing ESOUND
</p>
187 <h2><a name=
"download">Download
</a></h2>
189 <p>The newest release is always available from
<a href=
"@PACKAGE_URL@">@PACKAGE_URL@
</a></p>
191 <p>The current release is
<a href=
"@PACKAGE_URL@polypaudio-@PACKAGE_VERSION@.tar.gz">@PACKAGE_VERSION@
</a></p>
193 <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>
195 <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>
198 <address class=
"grey">Lennart Poettering
<@PACKAGE_BUGREPORT@
>, September
2004</address>
199 <div class=
"grey"><i>$Id$
</i></div>