And now, with ALSA working well with software TTS and
cooperating with ALSA_aware streaming applications
such as mplayer it's time to close the legacy loop
for those few applications that still have the old
OSS API hard-wired.
One such useful application is trplayer --- the
command-line real player that has not been updated in
over 4 years.
For the most part, the functionality provided by
trplayer is subsumed by the newer --- and actively
maintained --- mplayer but it's still useful to have
trplayer for times when mplayer hits
gliches with slow-responding RTSP streams.
The ALSA way of handling such legacy applications is through
the ALSA OSS emulation layer; Emacspeak now contains a
script etc/atrplayer that invokes
trplayer via aoss. Incidentally for
the more observant Emacspeak user running out of CVS, script
atrplayer is not new; it has been around for about a
year, but until now it used command vsound to stream
the converted audio to command aplay. I needed to do
this until ALSA 1.0.11 since trplayer used to fail
sporadically if run through the AOSS emulation
layer. But those problems now seem to be in the past with the
upgrade to ALSA 1.0.11. As usual with cutting edge technology
like ALSA, your mileage with all of this will vary; so
let me end with the usual disclaimer --- if it breaks, you get to
keep both pieces.