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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 <p><i>Exception: The client libraries are licensed under LGPL, the Lesser GNU General Plublic License.</i></p>
  44
  45 <h2><a name="news">News</a></h2>
  46
  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>
  50
  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>
  54
  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>
  59
  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>
  62
  63 <h2><a name="overview">Overview</a></h2>
  64
  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>
  71
  72 <ul>
  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>
  82 </ul>
  83
  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>
  91
  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>
  95
  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>
 101
 102 <h2><a name="status">Status</a></h2>
 103
 104 <p>Version @PACKAGE_VERSION@ is quite usable. It matches and supersedes ESOUND's feature set in nearly all areas.</p>
 105
 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>
 109
 110 <h2><a name="documentation">Documentation</a></h2>
 111
 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>
 116
 117 <h3>First Steps</h3>
 118
 119 <p>Simply start the polypaudio daemon with the argument <tt>-C</tt></p>
 120
 121 <pre>polypaudio -C</pre>
 122
 123 <p>This will present you a screen like this:</p>
 124
 125 <pre>Welcome to polypaudio! Use "help" for usage information.
 126 &gt;&gt;&gt; </pre>
 127
 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
 131 command line :</p>
 132
 133 <pre>polypaudio -F polypaudio.pa</pre>
 134
 135 <p>This will load some drivers and protocols automatically.</p>
 136
 137 <h3>Developing polypaudio Clients</h3>
 138
 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>
 142
 143 <h3>Developing polypaudio Modules</h3>
 144
 145 <p>There are several reasons for writing loadable modules for polypaudio:</p>
 146
 147 <ul>
 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>
 153 </ul>
 154
 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
 158 questions.</p>
 159
 160 <h2><a name="requirements">Requirements</a></h2>
 161
 162 <p>Currently, <tt>polypaudio</tt> is tested on Linux only. It requires an OSS or ALSA compatible soundcard.</p>
 163
 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
 168 management.</p>
 169
 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>
 174
 175 <h2><a name="installation">Installation</a></h2>
 176
 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>
 182
 183 <h2><a name="acks">Acknowledgements</a></h2>
 184
 185 <p>Eric B. Mitchell for writing ESOUND</p>
 186
 187 <h2><a name="download">Download</a></h2>
 188
 189 <p>The newest release is always available from <a href="@PACKAGE_URL@">@PACKAGE_URL@</a></p>
 190
 191 <p>The current release is <a href="@PACKAGE_URL@polypaudio-@PACKAGE_VERSION@.tar.gz">@PACKAGE_VERSION@</a></p>
 192
 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>
 194
 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>
 196
 197 <hr/>
 198 <address class="grey">Lennart Poettering &lt;@PACKAGE_BUGREPORT@&gt;, September 2004</address>
 199 <div class="grey"><i>$Id$</i></div>
 200
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