code.delx.au - pulseaudio/blob - doc/README.html.in

   1 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?> <!-- -*-html-helper-*- -->
   2 <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
   3 <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
   4
   5 <head>
   6 <title>polypaudio @PACKAGE_VERSION@</title>
   7 <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="style.css" />
   8 </head>
   9
  10 <body>
  11 <h1><a name="top">polypaudio @PACKAGE_VERSION@</a></h1>
  12
  13 <p><i>Copyright 2004-2006 Lennart Poettering &lt;@PACKAGE_BUGREPORT@&gt;</i> and Pierre Ossman</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">Current 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 Lesser 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 Lesser General Public License for more details.</p>
  38
  39 <p>You should have received a copy of the GNU Lesser 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">Thu Apr 13 2006: </div> <p class="news-text"><a
  46 href="@PACKAGE_URL@polypaudio-0.8.tar.gz">Version 0.8</a> released;
  47 changes include: too many to count; many, many minor fixes.</p>
  48
  49 <div class="news-date">Sun Nov 21 2004: </div> <p class="news-text"><a
  50 href="@PACKAGE_URL@polypaudio-0.7.tar.gz">Version 0.7</a> released;
  51 changes include: IPv6 support; PID file support; publish credentials
  52 in X11 root window (<tt>module-x11-publish</tt>; new tool <tt>pacmd</tt>; ESOUND backend; new command <tt>load-sample-dir-lazy</tt>; many, many minor fixes.</p>
  53
  54 <div class="news-date">Thu Oct 28 2004: </div> <p class="news-text"><a
  55 href="@PACKAGE_URL@polypaudio-0.6.tar.gz">Version 0.6</a> released;
  56 changes include: TCP wrappers support; don't load the complete sound
  57 file into memory when playing back using <tt>pa_play_file()</tt>;
  58 autoload API change; don't load all sound files as FLOAT32; shorten
  59 default buffers; client-side latency interpolation; add new user
  60 volume metrics; add <tt>module-tunnel</tt>, <tt>module-null-sink</tt>,
  61 <tt>module-match</tt> and new tool <tt>paplay</tt>; new API version
  62 macros; many client API improvements; correctly lock cookie file
  63 generation; correctly lock daemon autospawning; print daemon layout to
  64 STDERR on SIGHUP; new options for <tt>pacat</tt>: allow sample type specification.</p>
  65
  66 <div class="news-date">Mon Sep 24 2004: </div> <p class="news-text"><a
  67 href="@PACKAGE_URL@polypaudio-0.5.1.tar.gz">Version 0.5.1</a> released;
  68 changes include: improve esound protocol compatibility; fix
  69 autospawning via <tt>libesd</tt>; make use of POSIX capabilities;
  70 allow <tt>SCHED_FIFO</tt> scheduling only for users in group
  71 <tt>realtime</tt>; minor build system fix.</p>
  72
  73 <div class="news-date">Mon Sep 20 2004: </div> <p class="news-text"><a
  74 href="@PACKAGE_URL@polypaudio-0.5.tar.gz">Version 0.5</a> released;
  75 changes include: extensive API improvements, new module
  76 <tt>module-combine</tt> for combining multiple sound cards into one,
  77 gcc 2.95 compatibility, configuration files, add "lazy" samples,
  78 support for source and network latency measurements, add
  79 <tt>module-pipe-source</tt>, many other fixes and improvements.</p>
  80
  81 <div class="news-date">Wed Sep 8 2004: </div> <p class="news-text"><a
  82 href="@PACKAGE_URL@polypaudio-0.4.tar.gz">Version 0.4</a> released;
  83 changes include: daemon auto spawning, support for <tt>SCHED_FIFO</tt> scheduling, three new modules, proper logging, CPU load watchdog, many fixes.</p>
  84
  85 <div class="news-date">Fri Aug 27 2004: </div> <p class="news-text"><a
  86 href="@PACKAGE_URL@polypaudio-0.3.tar.gz">Version 0.3</a> released;
  87 changes include: support for both glib 2.0 and glib 1.2, future cancellation, API updates, many fixes, relicense client library to LGPL.</p>
  88
  89 <div class="news-date">Fri Aug 20 2004: </div> <p class="news-text"><a
  90 href="@PACKAGE_URL@polypaudio-0.2.tar.gz">Version 0.2</a> released;
  91 changes include: added sample cache, introspection API, client API
  92 documentation, module autoloading, glib support, a module for intercepting X11 bell events, and much more.</p>
  93
  94 <div class="news-date">Sat Jul 17 2004: </div> <p class="news-text"><a
  95 href="@PACKAGE_URL@polypaudio-0.1.tar.gz">Version 0.1</a> released</p>
  96
  97 <h2><a name="overview">Overview</a></h2>
  98
  99 <p><tt>polypaudio</tt> is a networked sound server for Linux and other
 100 Unix like operating systems. It is intended to be an improved drop-in
 101 replacement for the <a
 102 href="http://www.tux.org/~ricdude/apps.html">Enlightened Sound
 103 Daemon</a> (ESOUND). In addition to the features ESOUND provides
 104 <tt>polypaudio</tt> has:</p>
 105
 106 <ul>
 107   <li>Extensible plugin architecture (by loading dynamic loadable modules with <tt>dlopen()</tt>)</li>
 108   <li>Support for more than one sink/source</li>
 109   <li>Better low latency behaviour</li>
 110   <li>Embedabble into other software (the core is available as C library)</li>
 111   <li>Completely asynchronous C API</li>
 112   <li>Simple command line interface for reconfiguring the daemon while running</li>
 113   <li>Flexible, implicit sample type conversion and resampling</li>
 114   <li>"Zero-Copy" architecture</li>
 115   <li>Module autoloading</li>
 116   <li>Very accurate latency measurement for playback and recording.</li>
 117   <li>May be used to combine multiple sound cards to one (with sample rate adjustment)</li>
 118   <li>Client side latency interpolation</li>
 119   <li>Ability to fully synchronize multiple playback streams</li>
 120 </ul>
 121
 122 <p>Both the core and the client API are completely asynchronous making
 123 use of a simple main loop abstraction layer. This allows easy
 124 integration with asynchronous applications using the
 125 <tt>glib</tt>/<tt>gtk</tt> mainloop. Since the asynchronous API
 126 available through <tt>polyplib</tt> is quite difficult to use there is
 127 a simplified synchronous API wrapper <tt>polyplib-simple</tt>
 128 available. A simple main loop implementation is available as well.</p>
 129
 130 <p>The following modules are currently available:</p>
 131
 132 <ul>
 133   <li><tt>module-oss</tt>: driver for Open Sound System audio sinks and sources.</li>
 134   <li><tt>module-oss-mmap</tt>: same as above, but uses <tt>mmap()</tt> access to the audio buffer. Not as compatible</li>
 135   <li><tt>module-alsa-sink</tt>, <tt>module-alsa-source</tt>: drivers for ALSA sinks and sources</li>
 136   <li><tt>module-solaris</tt>: drivers for Solaris audio sinks and sources</li>
 137   <li><tt>module-waveout</tt>: drivers for Microsoft Windows audio sinks and sources</li>
 138   <li><tt>module-pipe-sink</tt>, <tt>module-pipe-source</tt>: demonstration module providing UNIX fifos backed sinks/sources</li>
 139   <li><tt>module-combine</tt>: combine multiple sinks into one.</li>
 140   <li><tt>module-sine</tt>: a sine generate sink input.</li>
 141   <li><tt>module-x11-bell</tt>: play a sample from the sample cache on every X11 bell event.</li>
 142   <li><tt>module-x11-publish</tt>: store Polypaudio credentials in the X11 root window.</li>
 143   <li><tt>module-esound-protocol-tcp</tt>, <tt>module-esound-protocol-unix</tt>: ESOUND compatibility modules (for TCP/IP resp. UNIX domain sockets)</li>
 144   <li><tt>module-native-protocol-tcp</tt>, <tt>module-native-protocol-unix</tt>: Native polypaudio protocol (for TCP/IP resp. UNIX domain sockets)</li>
 145   <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>
 146   <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>
 147   <li><tt>module-tunnel-sink</tt>, <tt>module-tunnel-source</tt>: make sinks/sources from other hosts available locally.</li>
 148   <li><tt>module-match</tt>: adjust volume automatically for newly created playback streams based on a regular expression matching table.</li>
 149   <li><tt>module-null-sink</tt>: a clocked sink similar to <tt>/dev/null</tt>.</li>
 150   <li><tt>module-esound-sink</tt>: a sink for forwarding audio data to an ESOUND server.</li>
 151   <li><tt>module-detect</tt>: a module which automatically detects what sound hardware is available locally and which loads the required driver modules.</li>
 152   <li><tt>module-lirc</tt>: a module to control the volume of a sink with infrared remote controls supported by LIRC.</li>
 153   <li><tt>module-mmkbd-evdev</tt>: a module to control the volume of a sink with the special volume keys of a multimeda keyboard.</li>
 154   <li><tt>module-zeroconf-publish</tt>: a module to publish local sources/sinks using mDNS zeroconf.</li>
 155 </ul>
 156
 157 <p><tt>polypaudio</tt> is the successor of my previous, ill-fated
 158 attempt to write a sound server, <a
 159 href="http://asd.sf.net/">asd</a>.</p>
 160
 161 <p>A GTK GUI manager application for polypaudio is the <a
 162 href="http://0pointer.de/lennart/projects/paman/">Polypaudio
 163 Manager</a>. Another GTK GUI tool for Polypaudio is the <a
 164 href="http://0pointer.de/lennart/projects/pavumeter">Polypaudio Volume
 165 Meter</a>.</p>
 166
 167 <p>There are output plugins for <a
 168 href="http://0pointer.de/lennart/projects/xmms-polyp/">XMMS</a>, <a
 169 href="http://0pointer.de/lennart/projects/libao-polyp/">libao</a>
 170 (merged in <tt>libao</tt> SVN) and <a
 171 href="http://0pointer.de/lennart/projects/gst-polyp/">gstreamer</a>
 172 (merged in <tt>gstreamer-plugins</tt> CVS), <a
 173 href="http://mplayerhq.hu">MPlayer</a> (merged in MPlayer CVS) and <a
 174 href="http://xine.sf.net/">Xine</a> (merged in Xine CVS). Drivers for
 175 <a href="http://www.portaudio.com/">PortAudio</a> will be released
 176 shortly.</p>
 177
 178 <h2><a name="status">Current Status</a></h2>
 179
 180 <p>Version @PACKAGE_VERSION@ is quite usable. It matches and supersedes ESOUND's feature set in nearly all areas.</p>
 181
 182 <p><b>Warning:</b> polypaudio's client API and protocol are not stable
 183 yet. The client interface is still a moving target and changes from
 184 release to release. The client API's library version number is currently fixed to <tt>0.0.0</tt>.</p>
 185
 186 <h2><a name="documentation">Documentation</a></h2>
 187
 188 <p>There is some preliminary documentation available: <a
 189 href="modules.html"><tt>modules.html</tt></a>, <a
 190 href="cli.html"><tt>cli.html</tt></a>, <a
 191 href="daemon.html"><tt>daemon.html</tt></a> and <a href="FAQ.html"><tt>FAQ.html</tt></a>.</p>
 192
 193 <p>There is a <a href="http://www.edgewall.com/products/trac/">Trac</a> based <a href="http://0pointer.de/trac/polypaudio/">Wiki for Polypaudio</a> available.</p>
 194
 195 <p></p>
 196
 197 <h3>First Steps</h3>
 198
 199 <p>Simply start the polypaudio daemon with the argument <tt>-nC</tt></p>
 200
 201 <pre>polypaudio -nC</pre>
 202
 203 <p>This will present you a screen like this:</p>
 204
 205 <pre>Welcome to polypaudio! Use "help" for usage information.
 206 &gt;&gt;&gt; </pre>
 207
 208 <p>Now you can issue CLI commands as described in <a
 209 href="cli.html"><tt>cli.html</tt></a>. Another way to start
 210 <tt>polypaudio</tt> is by specifying a configuration script like that one included in the distribution on the
 211 command line :</p>
 212
 213 <pre>polypaudio -nF polypaudio.pa</pre>
 214
 215 <p>This will load some drivers and protocols automatically.</p>
 216
 217 <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>
 218
 219 <p><b>Beware!</b> Unless you pass the option <tt>--sysconfdir=/etc</tt> to
 220 <tt>configure</tt>, the directory <tt>/etc/polypaudio/</tt> is really
 221 <tt>/usr/local/etc/polypaudio/</tt>.</p>
 222
 223 <h3>Developing polypaudio Clients</h3>
 224
 225 <p>You may browse the <a href="http://www.doxygen.org/">Doxygen</a> generated <a
 226 href="http://0pointer.de/lennart/projects/polypaudio/doxygen/">programing
 227 documentation</a> for the client API. (Run <tt>make doxygen</tt> to generate this documentation from the source tree)</p>
 228
 229 <h3>Developing polypaudio Modules</h3>
 230
 231 <p>There are several reasons for writing loadable modules for polypaudio:</p>
 232
 233 <ul>
 234   <li>Device driver support in addition to ALSA/OSS</li>
 235   <li>Protocol support beyond ESOUND's protocol and the native protocol. (such as NAS or a subset of aRts)</li>
 236   <li>New programming interfaces such as XMLRPC or DBUS for controlling the daemon.</li>
 237   <li>Hooking audio event sources directly into polypaudio (similar to <tt>module-x11-bell</tt>)</li>
 238   <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>
 239 </ul>
 240
 241 <p>There is currently no documentation how to write loadable modules
 242 for polypaudio. <i>Read the source, Luke!</i> If you are interested in
 243 writing new modules feel free to contact the author in case you have any
 244 questions.</p>
 245
 246 <h2><a name="requirements">Requirements</a></h2>
 247
 248 <p>Currently, <tt>polypaudio</tt> is tested on Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris and Microsoft Windows. It requires an OSS, ALSA, Win32 or Solaris compatible soundcard.</p>
 249
 250 <p><tt>polypaudio</tt> was developed and tested on Debian GNU/Linux
 251 "testing" from November 2004, it should work on most other Linux
 252 distributions (and maybe Unix versions) since it uses GNU autoconf and
 253 GNU libtool for source code configuration and shared library
 254 management.</p>
 255
 256 <p><tt>polypaudio</tt> needs <a
 257 href="http://www.mega-nerd.com/SRC/">Secret Rabbit Code (aka
 258 <tt>libsamplerate</tt>)</a>, <a
 259 href="http://www.mega-nerd.com/libsndfile"><tt>libsndfile</tt></a>, <a
 260 href="http://liboil.freedesktop.org/wiki/"><tt>liboil</tt></a>.</p>
 261
 262 <p>Optionally it can make use of <tt>libwrap</tt>, <a
 263 href="http://www.alsa-project.org/">alsa-lib</a>, <a
 264 href="http://0pointer.de/lennart/projects/libasyncns/">libasyncns</a>,
 265 <a href="http://www.lirc.org/">lirc</a>, <a href="http://www.porchdogsoft.com/products/howl/">HOWL</a> (or preferably the compatibility layer included in its superior replacement <a href="http://www.avahi.org/">Avahi</a>) and <a
 266 href="http://www.gtk.org/">GLIB</a>. (The latter is required for
 267 building the GLIB main loop integration module only.)</p>
 268
 269 <h2><a name="installation">Installation</a></h2>
 270
 271 <p>As this package is made with the GNU autotools you should run
 272 <tt>./configure</tt> inside the distribution directory for configuring
 273 the source tree. After that you should run <tt>make</tt> for
 274 compilation and <tt>make install</tt> (as root) for installation of
 275 <tt>polypaudio</tt>.</p>
 276
 277 <h2><a name="acks">Acknowledgements</a></h2>
 278
 279 <p>Eric B. Mitchell for writing ESOUND</p>
 280
 281 <p>Jeff Waugh for creating Ubuntu packages (and hopefully soon Debian)</p>
 282
 283 <p>Miguel Freitas for writing a Polypaudio driver for Xine</p>
 284
 285 <p>Joe Marcus Clarke for porting Polypaudio to FreeBSD</p>
 286
 287 <h2><a name="download">Download</a></h2>
 288
 289 <p>The newest release is always available from <a href="@PACKAGE_URL@">@PACKAGE_URL@</a></p>
 290
 291 <p>The current release is <a href="@PACKAGE_URL@polypaudio-@PACKAGE_VERSION@.tar.gz">@PACKAGE_VERSION@</a></p>
 292
 293 <p>Get <tt>polypaudio</tt>'s development sources from the <a href="http://subversion.tigris.org/">Subversion</a> <a href="svn://0pointer.de/polypaudio">repository</a> (<a href="http://0pointer.de/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/?root=polypaudio">viewcvs</a>): </p>
 294
 295 <pre>svn checkout svn://0pointer.de/polypaudio/trunk polypaudio</pre>
 296
 297 <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>
 298
 299 <p>There is a general discussion <a href="https://tango.0pointer.de/mailman/listinfo/polypaudio-discuss">mailing list for polypaudio</a> available. In addition, you can subscribe to <a href="https://tango.0pointer.de/mailman/listinfo/polypaudio-commits">SVN changes</a> and <a href="https://tango.0pointer.de/mailman/listinfo/polypaudio-tickets">Trac Tickets</a>.</p>
 300
 301 <p>There is a <a href="http://www.edgewall.com/products/trac/">Trac</a> based <a href="http://0pointer.de/trac/polypaudio/">Wiki for Polypaudio</a> available.</p>
 302
 303 <p><b>Please report bugs to <a href="http://0pointer.de/trac/polypaudio/newticket">our Trac ticket system</a>.</b></p>
 304
 305 <hr/>
 306 <address class="grey">Lennart Poettering &lt;@PACKAGE_BUGREPORT@&gt;, April 2006</address>
 307 <div class="grey"><i>$Id$</i></div>
 308
 309 </body>
 310 </html>