[Lowfer] Fw: Linux and soundcards

Sun, 24 Nov 2002 08:58:46 -0000

I asked my son, who is heavily involved in Linux, for his comments. Here is
his reply.

Regards,
John Rabson G3PAI

----- Original Message -----
From: "Hugo Rabson" <[email protected]>
To: "John Rabson" <[email protected]>
Sent: Saturday, November 23, 2002 6:55 AM
Subject: Re: Linux and soundcards

> Hi Dad,
>
> Rik van Riel (in case you didn't know) is a programmer who works on the
Linux kernel from time to time. He wrote the virtual memory manager for the
early 2.4.x branch of the kernel, if I recall correctly, so I suspect he
knows more about this than I do. However, I've done some digging & I think
the victim - er, volunteer - who ports Argo to Linux will want to use the
ALSA architecture, which provides the user with a high-level API with which
to interface with the audio hardware.
>
> http://www.alsa-project.org/documentation.php3#0.9doc
>
> >From the website:-
>
> The Advanced Linux Sound Architecture (ALSA) provides audio and MIDI
functionality to the Linux operating system. ALSA has the following
significant features:
>
> - Efficient support for all types of audio interfaces, from consumer
soundcards to professional multichannel audio interfaces.
> - Fully modularized sound drivers.
> - SMP and thread-safe design.
> - User space library (alsa-lib) to simplify application programming and
provide higher level functionality.
> - Support for the older OSS API, providing binary compatibility for most
OSS programs.
>
> -Hugo
>
>
>
> +-----Everyone loves Mondo-----+
> |  http://www.mondorescue.com  |
> +-----The other white meat-----+
>
>
> --- "John Rabson" <[email protected]> wrote:
> >Hi,
> >
> >Cane you point these people at a good source of information on how Linux
> >handles the sound card, please?
> >
> >Kind thoughtss,
> >Dad
> >
> >----- Original Message -----
> >From: "Alberto di Bene" <[email protected]>
> >To: <[email protected]>
> >Sent: Tuesday, November 19, 2002 4:18 PM
> >Subject: [Lowfer] Re: Lowfer digest, Vol 1 #428 - 9 msgs
> >
> >
> >> Rik van Riel <[email protected]> wrote :
> >>
> >> > A quick question, in what language was Argo written ?
> >> >
> >> > How hard would it be to port the thing to Linux ?
> >> > (and yes, I'm willing to do the work)
> >> >
> >> > Rik
> >>
> >> Argo is written in C++, using the Borland C++Builder
> >> compiler. And it uses the Intel Signal Processing Library.
> >> The porting to Linux in theory can be done, as Borland
> >> has recently released a Linux version of the compiler,
> >> and the Intel library is available also for Linux.
> >> The sound card interfacing should be entirely rewritten,
> >> I am told that with Linux audio is managed in a completely
> >> different way (I am by no means a Linux expert).
> >>
> >> A problem that I see is that some components (like the
> >> sliding ruler for the frequency scale and a couple others)
> >> are written in Object Pascal (the Borland compiler allows
> >> this coexistence). Don't know how portable this can be to Linux.
> >>
> >> If you are seriously interested to do the porting,
> >> contact me offline, maybe after I have solved the XP problem...
> >>
> >> 73  Alberto  I2PHD
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
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> >>
>
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