
                               polypaudio 0.5.1

   Copyright 2004 Lennart Poettering <mzcbylcnhqvb (at) 0pointer (dot)
   de>
     * [1]License
     * [2]News
     * [3]Overview
     * [4]Status
     * [5]Documentation
     * [6]Requirements
     * [7]Installation
     * [8]Acknowledgements
     * [9]Download

License

   This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
   it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
   the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at
   your option) any later version.

   This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
   WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
   MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU
   General Public License for more details.

   You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
   along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
   Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.

   Exception: The client libraries are licensed under LGPL, the Lesser
   GNU General Plublic License.

News

   Mon Sep 24 2004:

   [10]Version 0.5.1 released; changes include: improve esound protocol
   compatibility; fix autospawning via libesd; make use of POSIX
   capabilities; allow SCHED_FIFO scheduling only for users in group
   realtime; minor build system fix.

   Mon Sep 20 2004:

   [11]Version 0.5 released; changes include: extensive API improvements,
   new module module-combine for combining multiple sound cards into one,
   gcc 2.95 compatibility, configuration files, add "lazy" samples,
   support for source and network latency measurements, add
   module-pipe-source, many other fixes and improvements.

   Wed Sep 8 2004:

   [12]Version 0.4 released; changes include: daemon auto spawning,
   support for SCHED_FIFO scheduling, three new modules, proper logging,
   CPU load watchdog, many fixes.

   Fri Aug 27 2004:

   [13]Version 0.3 released; changes include: support for both glib 2.0
   and glib 1.2, future cancellation, API updates, many fixes, relicense
   client library to LGPL.

   Fri Aug 20 2004:

   [14]Version 0.2 released; changes include: added sample cache,
   introspection API, client API documentation, module autoloading, glib
   support, a module for intercepting X11 bell events, and much more.

   Sat Jul 17 2004:

   [15]Version 0.1 released

Overview

   polypaudio is a sound server for Linux and other Unix like operating
   systems. It is intended to be an improved drop-in replacement for the
   [16]Enlightened Sound Daemon (ESOUND). In addition to the features
   ESOUND provides polypaudio has:
     * Extensible plugin architecture (by loading dynamic loadable
       modules with dlopen())
     * Support for more than one sink/source
     * Better low latency behaviour
     * Embedabble into other software (the core is available as C
       library)
     * Completely asynchronous C API
     * Simple command line interface for reconfiguring the daemon while
       running
     * Flexible, implicit sample type conversion and resampling
     * "Zero-Copy" architecture
     * Module autoloading
     * Very accurate latency measurement for playback and recordin.
     * May be used to combine multiple sound cards to one (with sample
       rate adjustment)

   Both the core and the client API are completely asynchronous making
   use of a simple main loop abstraction layer. This allows easy
   integration with asynchronous applications using the glib/gtk
   mainloop. Since the asynchronous API available through polyplib is
   quite difficult to use there is a simplified synchronous API wrapper
   polyplib-simple available. A simple main loop implementation is
   available as well.

   The following modules are currently available:
     * module-oss: driver for Open Sound System audio sinks and sources.
     * module-oss-mmap: same as above, but uses mmap() access to the
       audio buffer. Not as compatible
     * module-alsa-sink, module-alsa-source: drivers for ALSA sinks and
       sources
     * module-pipe-sink, module-pipe-source: demonstration module
       providing UNIX fifos backed sinks/sources
     * module-combine: combine multiple sinks into one.
     * module-sine: a sine generate sink input.
     * module-x11-bell: play a sample from the sample cache on every X11
       bell event.
     * module-esound-protocol-tcp, module-esound-protocol-unix: ESOUND
       compatibility modules (for TCP/IP resp. UNIX domain sockets)
     * module-native-protocol-tcp, module-native-protocol-unix: Native
       polypaudio protocol (for TCP/IP resp. UNIX domain sockets)
     * module-simple-protocol-tcp, module-simple-protocol-unix:
       Simplistic protocol for playback/capture for usage with tools like
       netcat (for TCP/IP resp. UNIX domain sockets)
     * module-cli-protocol-tcp, module-cli-protocol-unix, module-cli:
       Expose polypaudio's internals whith a simple command line
       interface. (for TCP/IP resp. UNIX domain sockets resp.
       STDIN/STDOUT)

   polypaudio is the successor of my previous, ill-fated attempt to write
   a sound server, [17]asd.

   A GTK GUI manager application for polypaudio is the [18]Polypaudio
   Manager. Another GTK GUI tool for Polypaudio is the [19]Polypaudio
   Volume Meter. There are output plugins for [20]XMMS and [21]libao.
   Drivers for [22]gstreamer and [23]MPlayer will be released shortly.

Status

   Version 0.5.1 is quite usable. It matches and supersedes ESOUND's
   feature set in nearly all areas.

   Warning: polypaudio's client API and protocol are not stable yet. The
   client interface is still a moving target and changes from release to
   release. The client API's library version number is currently fixed to
   0.0.0.

Documentation

   There is some preliminary documentation available: [24]modules.html,
   [25]cli.html, [26]daemon.html, [27]FAQ.html, .

  First Steps

   Simply start the polypaudio daemon with the argument -nC
polypaudio -nC

   This will present you a screen like this:
Welcome to polypaudio! Use "help" for usage information.
>>>

   Now you can issue CLI commands as described in [28]cli.html. Another
   way to start polypaudio is by specifying a configuration script like
   that one included in the distribution on the command line :
polypaudio -nF polypaudio.pa

   This will load some drivers and protocols automatically.

   The best idea is to configure your daemon in
   /etc/polypaudio/daemon.conf and /etc/polypaudio/default.pa and to run
   polypaudio without any arguments.

  Developing polypaudio Clients

   You may browse the [29]Doxygen generated [30]programing documentation
   for the client API. (Run make doxygen to generate this documentation
   from the source tree)

  Developing polypaudio Modules

   There are several reasons for writing loadable modules for polypaudio:
     * Device driver support in addition to ALSA/OSS
     * Protocol support beyond ESOUND's protocol and the native protocol.
       (such as NAS or a subset of aRts)
     * New programming interfaces such as XMLRPC or DBUS for controlling
       the daemon.
     * Hooking audio event sources directly into polypaudio (similar to
       module-x11-bell)
     * For low latency applications such as VOIP: load the VOIP core
       directly into polypaudio and have a slim GUI frontend to control
       it.

   There is currently no documentation how to write loadable modules for
   polypaudio. Read the source, Luke! If you are interested in writing
   new modules feel free to contact the author in case you have any
   questions.

Requirements

   Currently, polypaudio is tested on Linux only. It requires an OSS or
   ALSA compatible soundcard.

   polypaudio was developed and tested on Debian GNU/Linux "testing" from
   July 2004, it should work on most other Linux distributions (and maybe
   Unix versions) since it uses GNU autoconf and GNU libtool for source
   code configuration and shared library management.

   polypaudio needs [31]Secret Rabbit Code (aka libsamplerate),
   [32]libsndfile, [33]alsa-lib and [34]GLIB. (The latter is required for
   building the GLIB main loop integration module only.)

Installation

   As this package is made with the GNU autotools you should run
   ./configure inside the distribution directory for configuring the
   source tree. After that you should run make for compilation and make
   install (as root) for installation of polypaudio.

Acknowledgements

   Eric B. Mitchell for writing ESOUND

Download

   The newest release is always available from
   [35]http://0pointer.de/lennart/projects/polypaudio/

   The current release is [36]0.5.1

   Get polypaudio's development sources from the [37]Subversion
   [38]repository ([39]viewcvs):
svn checkout svn://seth.intheinter.net/polypaudio/trunk polypaudio

   If you want to be notified whenever I release a new version of this
   software use the subscription feature of [40]Freshmeat.

   New! There is a general discussion [41]mailing list for polypaudio
   available.
     _________________________________________________________________


    Lennart Poettering <mzcbylcnhqvb (at) 0pointer (dot) de>, September
    2004

   $Id: README.html.in 239 2004-09-23 23:26:15Z lennart $

References

   1. README#license
   2. README#news
   3. README#overview
   4. README#status
   5. README#documentation
   6. README#requirements
   7. README#installation
   8. README#acks
   9. README#download
  10. http://0pointer.de/lennart/projects/polypaudio/polypaudio-0.5.1.tar.gz
  11. http://0pointer.de/lennart/projects/polypaudio/polypaudio-0.5.tar.gz
  12. http://0pointer.de/lennart/projects/polypaudio/polypaudio-0.4.tar.gz
  13. http://0pointer.de/lennart/projects/polypaudio/polypaudio-0.3.tar.gz
  14. http://0pointer.de/lennart/projects/polypaudio/polypaudio-0.2.tar.gz
  15. http://0pointer.de/lennart/projects/polypaudio/polypaudio-0.1.tar.gz
  16. http://www.tux.org/~ricdude/apps.html
  17. http://asd.sf.net/
  18. http://0pointer.de/lennart/projects/paman/
  19. http://0pointer.de/lennart/projects/pavumeter
  20. http://0pointer.de/lennart/projects/xmms-polyp/
  21. http://0pointer.de/lennart/projects/libao-polyp/
  22. http://gstreamer.net/
  23. http://mplayerhq.hu/
  24. file://localhost/home/lennart/projects/polypaudio/doc/modules.html
  25. file://localhost/home/lennart/projects/polypaudio/doc/cli.html
  26. file://localhost/home/lennart/projects/polypaudio/doc/daemon.html
  27. file://localhost/home/lennart/projects/polypaudio/doc/FAQ.html
  28. file://localhost/home/lennart/projects/polypaudio/doc/cli.html
  29. http://www.doxygen.org/
  30. http://0pointer.de/lennart/projects/polypaudio/doxygen/
  31. http://www.mega-nerd.com/SRC/
  32. http://www.mega-nerd.com/libsndfile
  33. http://www.alsa-project.org/
  34. http://www.gtk.org/
  35. http://0pointer.de/lennart/projects/polypaudio/
  36. http://0pointer.de/lennart/projects/polypaudio/polypaudio-0.5.1.tar.gz
  37. http://subversion.tigris.org/
  38. svn://seth.intheinter.net/polypaudio/
  39. http://0pointer.de/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/?root=polypaudio
  40. http://freshmeat.net/projects/polypaudio/
  41. https://seth.intheinter.net/mailman/listinfo/polypaudio-discuss
