AlsaPlayer - PCM audio player for Linux and compatible OSes

Written by Andy Lo A Foe (andy@alsa-project.org)

See the file COPYING for license details.


DESCRIPTION
-----------

AlsaPlayer is a new PCM player developed on the Linux Operating System. Since
the first public beta release it support has been added for various other
Operating Systems (mostly Unix variants). AlsaPlayer was written in the first
place to excercise the new ALSA (Advanced Linux Sound Architecture) driver and
library system. 


INPUT PLUGINS
-------------
The program is very much plugin based. New file formats can be added simply 
by writing a new input plugin. The only requirement is that the data can be
presented in PCM audio format. There are currently no plans to support
video or midi data formats (future projects will address this).
The following plugins are in various states of usability:

- MPEG audio plugin, based on mpg123 0.59r, works quite well
- CDDA plugin, play back audio CD's by ripping the data digitally of the disk
- MikMod plugin, play back all MikMod supported module formats, no random
  seeking in modules yet
- Audiofile library plugin, this one needs a bit of work still
- Sockmon plugin, not in the current source tree but work is progressing 


OUTPUT PLUGINS
--------------
AlsaPlayer also uses a plugin system for outputting audio data. The output
mechanism was designed with ALSA in mind of course. Many other Unix audio
systems map quite well on to it however. Supported output plugins include:

- ALSA, default plugin, best supported.
- OSS and OSS/Lite
- Esound
- Sparc (tested on UltraSparc)
- SGI


SCOPE PLUGINS
-------------
Just as input and output support gets loaded in dynamically, scope (or
visualization) plugins are laoded in dynamically also. This enables anyone to
develop a visualization plugin without changing a single line of code in the
main program. A few scope plugins are provided in the main alsaplayer
distribution:

- Monoscope
- Spacescope
- Levelmeter
- FFTscope
- FFTscope II
- logFFtscope

Nothing stops you from writing a kick ass *FULLSCREEN* (DGA) or even a
*Hardwarde Accellerated OpenGL* visualization plugin for AlsaPlayer!


EFFECTS PLUGINS
---------------
Work in progress...


CONTROLS
--------
Work in progress...


INSTALLATION
------------

Installing alsaplayer from source should be as easy as executing the configure
script and then make. The configure script will try to detect all input and
output plugins for your system.
** IMPORTANT**: Make sure you run 'make install' after the compilation is
finished. The various plugins need to be in a specific place on your system.
If you don't want to install it on your system right away you can always use a
different --prefix when running configure. 


RUNNING
-------

Just fire up the executable. You can pass files to play on the command line
too. These will be added to the queue while the first entry will start playing
automatically. The CD like button hides the menu. All other controls should be
straight forward. Improvements to the interface will follow soon.


MAILING LISTS
-------------

We now have a couple of mailing lists for alsaplayer

Name		: alsaplayer-announce
Description : notification of new versions (read-only)
Address		: mailto:alsaplayer-announce-request@lists.tartarus.org
			  with subject "subscribe"
			  
Name		: alsaplayer-devel
Description	: discuss development of alsaplayer
Address		: mailto:alsaplayer-devel-request@lists.tartarus.org
			  with subject "subscribe"
			 
Name		: alsaplayer-commits
Description	: keep up to dat on the CVS commits
Address		: mailto:alsaplayer-commits-request@lists.tartarus.org
			  with subject "subscribe"

More information on these mailing lists and online archives can be found at
http://lists.tartarus.org/mailman/listinfo/


CVS REPOSITORY
--------------

You can always check out the latest version of alsaplayer. Execute the
following commands in the directory you want the sources in:

cvs -d :pserver:anonymous@cvs.alsa-project.org:/home/cvsroot/alsaplayer login
(Password: guest)

cvs -d :pserver:anonymous@cvs.alsa-project.org:/home/cvsroot/alsaplayer \
	co alsaplayer


OTHER INFO
----------

WWW Page: http://www.alsa-project.org/~andy
Email	: <andy@alsa-project.org>
