forked from auracaster/pyalsaaudio
df89c12581
items. Argument parsing errors are reported with the methodname (minor improvement). Smallish documentation improvements. git-svn-id: svn://svn.code.sf.net/p/pyalsaaudio/code/trunk@23 ec2f30ec-7544-0410-870e-f70ca00c83f0
116 lines
3.7 KiB
TeX
116 lines
3.7 KiB
TeX
\documentclass{howto}
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\title{PyAlsaAudio}
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\release{0.4}
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% At minimum, give your name and an email address. You can include a
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% snail-mail address if you like.
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\author{Casper Wilstrup}
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\authoraddress{cwi@aves.dk}
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\begin{document}
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\maketitle
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% This makes the Abstract go on a separate page in the HTML version;
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% if a copyright notice is used, it should go immediately after this.
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%
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\ifhtml
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\chapter*{Front Matter\label{front}}
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\fi
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% Copyright statement should go here, if needed.
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This software is licensed under the PSF license - the same one used
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by the majority of the python distribution. Basically you can use it
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for anything you wish (even commercial purposes). There is no warranty
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whatsoever.
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% The abstract should be a paragraph or two long, and describe the
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% scope of the document.
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\begin{abstract}
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\noindent
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This package contains wrappers for accessing the ALSA API from Python.
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It is currently fairly complete for PCM devices and Mixer access. MIDI
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sequencer support is low on my priority list, but volunteers are
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welcome.
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If you find bugs in the wrappers please use the SourceForge bug
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tracker. Please don't send bug reports regarding ALSA specifically.
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There are several bugs in this API, and those should be reported to
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the ALSA team - not me.
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\end{abstract}
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\tableofcontents
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\section{What is ALSA}
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The Advanced Linux Sound Architecture (ALSA) provides audio and MIDI
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functionality to the Linux operating system.
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Logically ALSA consists of these components:
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\begin{itemize}
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\item A set of kernel drivers.\\
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These drivers are responsible for handling the physical sound
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hardware from within the Linux kernel, and have been the standard
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sound implementation in Linux since kernel version 2.5
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\item A kernel level API for manipulating the ALSA devices.
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\item A user-space C library for simplified access to the sound hardware
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from userspace applications. This library is called \textit{libasound}
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and is required by all ALSA capable applications.
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\end{itemize}
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More information about ALSA may be found on the project homepage
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\url{http://www.alsa-project.org}
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\section{ALSA and Python}
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The older Linux sound API (OSS) which is now deprecated is well
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supported from the standard Python library, through the ossaudiodev
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module. No native ALSA support exists in the standard library (yet).
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There are a few other ``ALSA for Python'' projects available,
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including at least two different projects called pyAlsa. Neither of
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these seem to be under active development at the time - and neither
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are very feature complete.
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I wrote PyAlsaAudio to fill this gap. My long term goal is to have the
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module included in the standard Python library, but that is probably a
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while off yet.
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PyAlsaAudio hass full support for sound capture, playback of sound, as
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well as the ALSA Mixer API.
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MIDI support is not available, and since I don't own any MIDI
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hardware, it's difficult for me to implement it. Volunteers to work on
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this would be greatly appreciated
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\section{Installation}
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Note: the wrappers link with the alsasound library (from the alsa-lib
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package) and need the ALSA headers for compilation. Verify that you
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have /usr/lib/libasound.so and /usr/include/alsa (or
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similar paths) before building.
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On Debian (and probably Ubuntu), make sure you have libasound2-dev installed.
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Naturally you also need to use a kernel with proper ALSA support. This
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is the default in Linux kernel 2.6 and later. If you are using kernel
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version 2.4 you may need to install the ALSA patches yourself -
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although most distributions ship with ALSA kernels.
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To install, execute the following: \\
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\begin{verbatim}
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$ python setup.py build
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\end{verbatim}
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And then as root: \\
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\begin{verbatim}
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# python setup.py install
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\end{verbatim}
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\input{libalsaaudio}
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\end{document}
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