* DisOrder Raw Format Players ** Purpose The purpose of raw format players is: * Support pausing of playing tracks, with the audio device closed when not in active use. * Eliminate the inter-track gap. * Perhaps in the future support network play. ** Usage To use raw format, use the execraw module and make the command choose the "disorder" libao driver. You may need to link the driver from wherever DisOrder installs it (e.g. /usr/local/lib/ao/plugins-2) to where libao will look for it (e.g. /usr/lib/ao/plugins-2 or /sw/lib/ao/plugins-2). You should pass the "fragile" option to ogg123. This is because ogg123 ignores write errors! mpg321 does not appear to have this bug. For _non_ raw players it is advisable to use the new --wait-for-device option. This repeatedly tries to open the audio device before starting the player proper. It times out after a couple of seconds. See disorder_config(5) and the example configuration file for further information and examples. ** Low-Level Details Raw format players are started slightly differently to normal ones. Before they are executed a pipe is created and one end passed to a special speaker process, which is spawned by the main server at startup. The file descriptor of the player's end is identified by $DISORDER_RAW_FD. The expected data format is a ao_sample_format structure followed by the raw sample data. However, this may be changed without notice in future versions of DisOrder. If you need a stable interface here for some reason then get in touch. Raw format players may be started before the track is to be played, and (if the track is then removed from the queue before it reaches the head) terminated before the track ever reaches a physical speaker. The point of this is to allow audio data to be ready to play the moment the previous track end, without having to wait for the player to start up. There is no way for a player to tell that this is going on. Local Variables: mode:outline fill-column:79 End: