From:	 Joe Drew <hoserhead@woot.net>
To:	 lwn@lwn.net
Subject: mpg321 0.2.9 released
Date:	 12 Mar 2002 06:22:46 -0500

Version 0.2.9 of the Free drop-in replacement for mpg123, mpg321, has
been released. This version contains several new features, as well as
fixes to several in previous versions of mpg321. This release is
targetted at Debian Woody, but is not feature-complete for version
0.3.0.
 
Highlights of this release include:
 * Shoutcast support, contributed by Luc Saillard.
 * ID3 tag support, contributed by Giuseppe Corbelli
   <cowo@lugbs.linux.it>.
 * A fix to the bug which caused gtoaster to break with mpg321.
 * Better network support, bugfixes, and other enhancements.
 
mpg321 now has a webpage, available at http://mpg321.sourceforge.net .
Thanks to Olli Rajala, who created the pages.
 
mpg321 can be downloaded from 
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=36274 .
 
To be informed of future releases of mpg321, subscribe to the
mpg321-announce mailing list: either send an email with 'subscribe' in
the body or subject to mpg321-announce-request@lists.sourceforge.net ,
or visit http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/mpg321-announce .
 
If you like mpg321, I ask kindly that you make a donation to the
Electronic Frontier Foundation, which helps ensure that writing software
of any kind  remains legal. You can find more information at
http://www.eff.org .
 
I am looking for people to help with everything involved in creating
mpg321, particularly in creation of .spec files and RPMs for various
RPM-based distributions. If you are interested in this or any other
task, please read the TODO file or send me an email.
 
mpg321 still lacks a few features that mpg123 has; namely
 * buffering
 * proxy support
 * Very low resource usage/high-speed decoding and downsampling
 
The first two items are being targetted for version 0.3.0. The last can
be helped by further optimizing MAD, in particular. Any and all
contributions are welcome.
 
ABOUT MPG321:
 
mpg321 was created to alleviate the dependency many people had on the
non-free command-line mp3 player mpg123. It allowed many front-ends to
mpg123 to move to the official Debian archive, rather than being
relegated to the 'contrib' section. 
mpg321 is based on the MAD MPEG decoder library by Rob Leslie. In
particular, this means that mpg321 uses only integer instructions to
decode mp3 files, which is a huge win on any processor which lacks a
floating point unit (FPU) like the ARM. It also means that mpg321 has
very high output quality, since MAD is a Full Layer III ISO/IEC 11172-3
audio decoder, as defined by the standard. See
http://www.mars.org/home/rob/proj/mpeg/ for more information.
mpg321 uses the libao audio library, developed mainly for the Ogg Vorbis
project, for output, which allows it (unlike mpg123) to switch output at
runtime. libao natively supports ESD, ALSA (both 0.5 and 0.9), aRts, and
OSS output, among others. See the mpg321 manual page for more details. 
 
-- 
Joe Drew <hoserhead@woot.net> <drew@debian.org>

Please encrypt email sent to me.