[Alsaplayer-announce] website update

[Dominique Michel]

Le Sat, 3 Feb 2007 01:35:53 +0100 (MET),
Eric Auer <eric at coli.uni-sb.de> a écrit :

> 
> Hi Dominique,
> 
> nice to know that alsaplayer still exists,
> but you seem to be the only really active
> member of this list ;-). How is the status
> of the software compared to, say, 0.99.x?
> 
> Greetings to Switzerland! Eric
> 

Hi Eric,

I know that, but if you take a look at the mails from the last week on
alsaplayer-devel http://lists.tartarus.org/pipermail/alsaplayer-devel/ ,
many peoples are happy at I try to bring a new life to the Alsaplayer and some
are interested to contribute new features. Those new features include existent
work they already have done, or work in progress. They are mainly new input
plugins and new and modern interfaces as well as new bindings for other
languages.

The status on the cvs compared to the last release, that is 0.99.76, is at the
program have one new functionality: a new man page from Debian, but include
many bug fixes from Debian and other peoples.

Those fixes include:

- Quick fix to the "work in progress" gtk2 interface to get it to compile
- Security patches for playing files from the internet without segfault
- new man page
- Fixes in the gtk interface, the alsa output plugin, the cdda (cdrom) input
plugin, the text interface, correct duration in the display when playing mono
files, the flac and audiofile input plugins, the jack output
- Fixed a compilation problem with the fftscope
- --enable-gtk2 will work with ./configure.

If you want to know more, you can take a look here:
http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?forum_id=33226 

I am in the way to do a new release with those bug fixes.

Another new release will follow with the already existing new functionalities
(new input plugins). I am not sure at that time if it will be a separate release
with only those plugins, if they will be included in the alsaplayer, or if some
will be separated when other will be included. I will try to include them,
because it will be less work on the long run when doing a new release.

I am becoming confident for the future of the alsaplayer because at even if it
doesn't have been a rush on the alsaplayer-devel list, and that is normal
for a program that have been sleeping under a so long time, the reactions
are very positives and the peoples interested to contribute code seem to know
what they want to do.

My personal goals for the Alsaplayer are (non exhaustive list) to extend its
capabilities, mainly with nls support (anyone interested to contribute code?)
and new input plugins, as well as to have some new and modern interface(s)
that will do a better use of the core API of the program.

A very good thing with this API is at it use floating point numbers to control
the volume and the speed, and it is possible with this to make amazing
features. As example a speed control that will not only have a cursor, but also
some buttons that will control dynamically generated exact values. That can be
very useful for a musician that want to re-tune the playing to the tuning of its
instrument, or for someone that want to change the speed by musical or
fixed steps. Another example is a volume control in dB. I implemented those
features in my fvwm-crystal theme, but it will be much better to have it
directly in Alsaplayer's interface so at everybody can enjoy it.

Ciao,

Dominique