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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
46 <div class="news-date">Sat Jul 17 2004: </div> <p class="news-text"><a
47 href="@PACKAGE_URL@polypaudio-0.1.tar.gz">Version 0.1</a> released</p>
48
49 <h2><a name="overview">Overview</a></h2>
50
51 <p><tt>polypaudio</tt> is a sound server for Linux and other Unix like
52 operating systems. It is intended to be an improved drop-in
53 replacement for the <a
54 href="http://www.tux.org/~ricdude/apps.html">Enlightened Sound
55 Daemon</a> (ESOUND). In addition to the features ESOUND provides
56 <tt>polypaudio</tt> has:</p>
57
58 <ul>
59 <li>Extensible plugin architecture (<tt>dlopen()</tt>)</li>
60 <li>Support for more than one sink/source</li>
61 <li>Better low latency behaviour</li>
62 <li>Embedabble into other software (the core is available as C library)</li>
63 <li>Completely asynchronous C API</li>
64 <li>Simple command line interface for reconfiguring the daemon while running</li>
65 <li>Flexible, implicit sample type conversion and resampling</li>
66 <li>"Zero-Copy" architecture</li>
67 </ul>
68
69 <p>Both the core and the client API are completely asynchronous making
70 use of a simple main loop abstraction layer. This allows easy
71 integration with asynchronous applications using the
72 <tt>glib</tt>/<tt>gtk</tt> mainloop. Since the asynchronous API
73 available through <tt>polyplib</tt> is quite difficult to use there is
74 a simplified synchronous API wrapper <tt>polyplib-simple</tt>
75 available. A simple main loop implementation is available as well.</p>
76
77 <h2><a name="status">Status</a></h2>
78
79 <p>Version @PACKAGE_VERSION@ is quite usable. <tt>polypaudio</tt> does
80 not yet match all ESOUND features: currently a sample cache and
81 automatic releasing of unused sound drivers are missing. Have a look
82 on the more extensive <a
83 href="http://0pointer.de/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/trunk/doc/todo?view=markup">TODO
84 list</a>.</p>
85
86 <h2><a name="documentation">Documentation</a></h2>
87
88 <p>There is some prelimenary documentation available: <a
89 href="modules.html"><tt>modules.html</tt></a>, <a
90 href="cli.html"><tt>cli.html</tt></a>, <a
91 href="daemon.html"><tt>daemeon.html</tt></a>.</p>
92
93 <p>Documentation for developing with <tt>polypaudio</tt> is not yet
94 available. Read the source, Luke! There are some example application
95 available: for the <a
96 href="http://0pointer.de/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/trunk/polyp/pacat.c?view=markup">asynchronous
97 API</a> and for the <a
98 href="http://0pointer.de/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/trunk/polyp/pacat-simple.c?view=markup">simple,
99 synchronous API</a>.</p>
100
101 <h3>First Steps</h1>
102
103 <p>Simply start the polypaudio daemon with the argument <tt>-C</tt></p>
104
105 <pre>polypaudio -C</pre>
106
107 <p>This will present you a screen like this:</p>
108
109 <pre>Welcome to polypaudio! Use "help" for usage information.
110 &gt;&gt;&gt; </pre>
111
112 <p>Now you can issue CLI commands as described in <a
113 href="cli.html"><tt>cli.html</tt></a>. Another way to start
114 <tt>polypaudio</tt> is by specifying a configuration script on the
115 command line like that one included in the distribution:</p>
116
117 <pre>polypaudio -F polypaudio.pa</pre>
118
119 <p>This will load some drivers and protocols automatically.</p>
120
121 <h2><a name="requirements">Requirements</a></h2>
122
123 <p>Currently, <tt>polypaudio</tt> is tested on Linux only. It requires an OSS or ALSA compatible soundcard.</p>
124
125 <p><tt>polypaudio</tt> was developed and tested on Debian GNU/Linux
126 "testing" from July 2004, it should work on most other Linux
127 distributions (and maybe Unix versions) since it uses GNU autoconf and
128 GNU libtool for source code configuration and shared library
129 management.</p>
130
131 <p><tt>polypaudio</tt> needs <a
132 href="http://www.mega-nerd.com/SRC/">Secret Rabbit Code (aka <tt>libsamplerate</tt>)</a> and <a href="http://www.alsa-project.org/">alsa-lib</a>.</p>
133
134 <h2><a name="installation">Installation</a></h2>
135
136 <p>As this package is made with the GNU autotools you should run
137 <tt>./configure</tt> inside the distribution directory for configuring
138 the source tree. After that you should run <tt>make</tt> for
139 compilation and <tt>make install</tt> (as root) for installation of
140 <tt>polypaudio</tt>.</p>
141
142 <h2><a name="acks">Acknowledgements</a></h2>
143
144 <p>Eric B. Mitchell for writing ESOUND</p>
145
146 <h2><a name="download">Download</a></h2>
147
148 <p>The newest release is always available from <a href="@PACKAGE_URL@">@PACKAGE_URL@</a></p>
149
150 <p>The current release is <a href="@PACKAGE_URL@polypaudio-@PACKAGE_VERSION@.tar.gz">@PACKAGE_VERSION@</a></p>
151
152 <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>
153
154 <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>
155
156 <hr/>
157 <address class="grey">Lennart Poettering &lt;@PACKAGE_BUGREPORT@&gt;, July 2004</address>
158 <div class="grey"><i>$Id$</i></div>
159
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