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. 

The remainder of this doc needs to be written still ;-]

