Subject: Linux-Activists - DOC Channel digest. 94-1-21-11:29
From: "Linux Activists" <[email-masked]>
To: "Linux-Activists" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 21 Feb 1994 15:10:29 +0200

Topics:
	 Linux Sound User's Guide

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From: [email-masked] (Jeff Tranter)
Subject: Linux Sound User's Guide
Date: Mon, 21 Feb 1994 05:38:30 +0200

I recently put together the Linux Sound HOWTO document (it's now
available on the major archive sites). I'm now thinking of expanding
this into a full-blown user's guide to sound under Linux (actually,
not just Linux, the "VoxWare" kernel sound driver has also been ported
to BSD, SCO, Interactive, and SysV Unixes).

The VoxWare User's Guide would cover the user visible aspects of the
sound driver. The author of the driver, Hannu Savolainen, is currently
working on a "Hacker's Guide" that will cover the technical side of
programming and the internals of the driver. This guide would
complement his.

I've put together a brief outline of what I intend to cover.  Before I
get too far into this, I'd like to get some feedback:

- is there enough interest that would this be a worthwhile effort?
- should this become one of the official Linux Documentation Project
  manuals?
- would anyone care to comment on the outline?

I intend to follow the LDP standard format (in fact, one of my reasons
for doing this is to learn about TeX).

Jeff

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			     Outline for:
		      VoxWare Sound Card Driver
			     User's Guide

Foreword
- background on why I wrote the guide
- organization of manual
- the Linux Documentation Project
- typographical conventions
- acknowledgments

Introduction
- what the sound driver is and what it does
- device files
- basic audio/sound/music terms and concepts (digital sampling, FM
  synthesis, MIDI, etc...)
- file standards (samples: .au, .voc, .wav), MIDI files, MOD files,
  Adagio)
- other sound card features (interfaces for CD-ROM, MIDI, SCSI,
  joystick, sound input/output, volume and tone controls, etc...)

Installation and Configuration under Linux
- supported sound hardware
- installing sound hardware
- configuring sound driver
- creating device files
- testing sound driver
- common problems
- the snd-kit and snd-data packages

Installation and Configuration under FreeBSD, NetBSD, SCO, ISC, SysV Unix
- these sections will be provided if someone agrees to write them...

PC Speaker Driver
- more information relevant to using the PC speaker drivers

Applications
- applications for digitized voice (sox, wavplay, vplay, auplay,
  srec/splay, etc...)
- applications for MIDI and music (Adagio, glib, Csound, Cmix, etc...)
- NCD NetAudio (find out who is porting this)
- games (bdash, xboing, Doom?)

Sound Card Programming Tutorial
- a brief tutorial on the basics of programming the sound driver
  (e.g. soundcard.h, opening device files, using ioctl)
- a couple of very simple programming examples (Hacker's Guide will
  cover this in detail)

Appendix
- bibliography: relevant FAQs, HOWTOs, books, USENET new groups
- copy of GNU General Public License
- glossary

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