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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?> <!-- -*-html-helper-*- -->
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<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">

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<title>polypaudio @PACKAGE_VERSION@</title>
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="style.css" />
</head>

<body>
<h1><a name="top">polypaudio @PACKAGE_VERSION@</a></h1>

<p><i>Copyright 2004 Lennart Poettering &lt;@PACKAGE_BUGREPORT@&gt;</i></p>

<ul class="toc">
    <li><a href="#license">License</a></li>
    <li><a href="#news">News</a></li>
    <li><a href="#overview">Overview</a></li>
    <li><a href="#status">Status</a></li>
    <li><a href="#documentation">Documentation</a></li>
    <li><a href="#requirements">Requirements</a></li>
    <li><a href="#installation">Installation</a></li>
    <li><a href="#acks">Acknowledgements</a></li>
    <li><a href="#download">Download</a></li>
</ul>

<h2><a name="license">License</a></h2>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<h2><a name="news">News</a></h2>


<div class="news-date">Sat Jul 17 2004: </div> <p class="news-text"><a
href="@PACKAGE_URL@polypaudio-0.1.tar.gz">Version 0.1</a> released</p>

<h2><a name="overview">Overview</a></h2>

<p><tt>polypaudio</tt> is a sound server for Linux and other Unix like
operating systems. It is intended to be an improved drop-in
replacement for the <a
href="http://www.tux.org/~ricdude/apps.html">Enlightened Sound
Daemon</a> (ESOUND). In addition to the features ESOUND provides
<tt>polypaudio</tt> has:</p>

<ul>
  <li>Extensible plugin architecture (<tt>dlopen()</tt>)</li>
  <li>Support for more than one sink/source</li>
  <li>Better low latency behaviour</li>
  <li>Embedabble into other software (the core is available as C library)</li>
  <li>Completely asynchronous C API</li>
  <li>Simple command line interface for reconfiguring the daemon while running</li>
  <li>Flexible, implicit sample type conversion and resampling</li>
  <li>"Zero-Copy" architecture</li>
</ul>

<p>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
<tt>glib</tt>/<tt>gtk</tt> mainloop. Since the asynchronous API
available through <tt>polyplib</tt> is quite difficult to use there is
a simplified synchronous API wrapper <tt>polyplib-simple</tt>
available. A simple main loop implementation is available as well.</p>

<p><tt>polypaudio</tt> is the successor of my previous, ill-fated attempt to write a sound server <a href="http://asd.sf.net/">asd</a>.</p>

<h2><a name="status">Status</a></h2>

<p>Version @PACKAGE_VERSION@ is quite usable. <tt>polypaudio</tt> does
not yet match all ESOUND features: currently a sample cache and
automatic releasing of unused sound drivers are missing. Have a look
on the more extensive <a
href="http://0pointer.de/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/trunk/doc/todo?view=markup">TODO
list</a>.</p>
  
<h2><a name="documentation">Documentation</a></h2>

<p>There is some prelimenary documentation available: <a
href="modules.html"><tt>modules.html</tt></a>, <a
href="cli.html"><tt>cli.html</tt></a>, <a
href="daemon.html"><tt>daemeon.html</tt></a>.</p>

<p>Documentation for developing with <tt>polypaudio</tt> is not yet
available. Read the source, Luke! There are some example application
available: for the <a
href="http://0pointer.de/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/trunk/polyp/pacat.c?view=markup">asynchronous
API</a> and for the <a
href="http://0pointer.de/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/trunk/polyp/pacat-simple.c?view=markup">simple,
synchronous API</a>.</p>

<h3>First Steps</h3>

<p>Simply start the polypaudio daemon with the argument <tt>-C</tt></p>

<pre>polypaudio -C</pre>

<p>This will present you a screen like this:</p>

<pre>Welcome to polypaudio! Use "help" for usage information.
&gt;&gt;&gt; </pre>

<p>Now you can issue CLI commands as described in <a
href="cli.html"><tt>cli.html</tt></a>. Another way to start
<tt>polypaudio</tt> is by specifying a configuration script on the
command line like that one included in the distribution:</p>

<pre>polypaudio -F polypaudio.pa</pre>

<p>This will load some drivers and protocols automatically.</p>

<h2><a name="requirements">Requirements</a></h2>

<p>Currently, <tt>polypaudio</tt> is tested on Linux only. It requires an OSS or ALSA compatible soundcard.</p>

<p><tt>polypaudio</tt> 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.</p>

<p><tt>polypaudio</tt> needs <a
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>
 
<h2><a name="installation">Installation</a></h2>

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

<h2><a name="acks">Acknowledgements</a></h2>

<p>Eric B. Mitchell for writing ESOUND</p>

<h2><a name="download">Download</a></h2>

<p>The newest release is always available from <a href="@PACKAGE_URL@">@PACKAGE_URL@</a></p>

<p>The current release is <a href="@PACKAGE_URL@polypaudio-@PACKAGE_VERSION@.tar.gz">@PACKAGE_VERSION@</a></p>

<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>

<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>

<hr/>
<address class="grey">Lennart Poettering &lt;@PACKAGE_BUGREPORT@&gt;, July 2004</address>
<div class="grey"><i>$Id$</i></div>

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