Random Wisdom

Tag: plugins

The 64-bit browser and 32-bit plugins dilemma …

by on Oct.08, 2005, under Linux, Software

Although 64 bit OSs and hence browsers are (almost) commonplace these days, the same thing cannot be said of their plugin counterparts. To this date there are no 64bit Java and Flash plugins .. rendering a huge proportion of pages on the net inaccessible from a 64 bit browser ..

As of this moment, the popular solution to this problem is to have two browsers. A primary browser (e.g. 64 bit FireFox) and a seconday browser + plugins (32 bit). Opera seems to be a popular choice as the secondary browser since it’s quite easy to get installed and use…

nspluginwrapper is another option. It allows the loading of 32bit plugins on a 64bit browser.

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Addressing Individual Audio Channels of a Multichannel ALSA System

by on Oct.03, 2005, under Hardware, How To ..., Linux, Software

At first I thought I could just use one of the audio editors to create a 5.1 channel sound file and blank all the channels that I don’t want. Sweep claims to be a multichannel audio editor but at the moment it’s not possible to edit the individual audio channels. So, I tried out Audacity. Although Audacity allows the editing of the individual channels, it’s not possible to save the edited file in a multichannel format – it’s invariably down-mixed to stereo. So, custom sound files were no longer an option ..

At this point, I started looking at the ALSA PCM plugins. The route plugin seemed like the perfect candidate. In order to use the plugin I had to create the plugin definitions in the file ~/.asoundrc:

[darkknight@darkworld ~]$ cat .asoundrc
pcm_slave.rt {
        pcm surround50
        channels 5
}

pcm.front_l {           #Front Left
        type route
        slave rt
        ttable.0.0 1
}

pcm.front_r {           #Front Right
        type route
        slave rt
        ttable.0.1 1
}

pcm.front_c {           #Front Center
        type route
        slave rt
        ttable.0.4 1
}

pcm.rear_l {            #Rear Left
        type route
        slave rt
        ttable.0.3 1
}

pcm.rear_r {            #Rear Right
        type route
        slave rt
        ttable.0.2 1
}

pcm.front_both {        #Front - Both
        type route
        slave rt
        ttable.0.0 1
        ttable.0.1 1
}

pcm.rear_both {         #Rear - Both
        type route
        slave rt
        ttable.0.2 1
        ttable.0.3 1
}

The plugins can be used with the aplay utility:

[darkknight@darkworld ~]$ aplay -D front_c /usr/share/sounds/alsa/Front_Center.wav
Playing WAVE '/usr/share/sounds/alsa/Front_Center.wav' : Signed 16 bit Little Endian, Rate 48000 Hz, Mono

Of course it makes sense to use only Mono files with the plugins since the mappings are always carried out from channel 1. It’s the ttable entry that’s responsible for the mapping. The first value is the source channel (0 = channel 1, 1 = channel 2, etc.). The second value is the channel to route to. The third value controls the volume; a value of 0 means 0% volume and a value of 1.0 means 100% volume.

With the new plugin definitions, it’s even easier to balance the speaker levels. The following command will alternate between the front speakers and the center speaker until interrupted:

[darkknight@darkworld ~]$ while [ 1 ]; do /usr/bin/aplay -D front_both -q /usr/share/sounds/alsa/Noise.wav;
/usr/bin/aplay -D front_c /usr/share/sounds/alsa/Noise.wav; done
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SUN Java on FC4

by on Sep.26, 2005, under How To ..., Linux, Software

There’s a nice article at FedoraNEWS.ORG by Paul Howarth on how to get the SUN Java working under FC4 using the new alternatives system. So, here it is:

JPackage Java for FC4

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GPLFlash 2

by on Aug.19, 2005, under Linux, Software


Ok .. built and installed GPLFlash .. at least Firefox thinks it’s installed. Time to give it a try: well .. seems like StarTrek.com still won’t work .. guess it won’t settle for anything less than Flash 6 🙁

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GPLFlash

by on Aug.19, 2005, under Linux, Software

Ever since I installed FC4 64-bit, plugins have been a constant pain is the a**. I remembered seeing a reference to GPLFlash some time back .. so I went and grabbed the source tarball .. unfortunately it requires too many *-devel packages and I can’t afford the disk space. So, rpm.pbone.net to the rescue. I managed to find a x86_64 rpm for SuSE 9.3 – so I’m gonna give that a go. Seems like it needs libresmgr which is not in any of the FC repos I use. So, I also needed to borrow that from SuSE.

It’s now that I fully appreciate the new localinstall option of yum. Point to to a local rpm and it sorts out dependencies from the actives repos .. just too cool..

Ok .. this isn’t going anywhere .. the dependencies are too SuSE centric .. guess I’ll just have to get the *-devel packages and make do with the source tarball..

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