                        cd-console
                     by Osku Salerma

1. General information and history

cd-console is a CD player program for linux. It first originated
many years ago because none of the available text-mode CD players for
linux was any good, so I decided to write my own. Some time after that
I wrote a QT version because QT was new and exciting back then and I
wanted to try GUI programming.

Then nothing much happened for several years. Then I decided the
low-level code sucked because I couldn't add couple of features I
wanted easily, so I rewrote it. Then I had to rewrite the text-mode
interface to accommodate to the changes and new features added. The QT
version would've needed a rewrite too, but by this time GTK had come
out and we all saw how Evil and Wrong QT was, so I scrapped the whole
QT version and started writing a GTK version. That never got finished,
because even though I was then using X 99% of the time, the text-mode
interface running in an xterm was proving to be everything I ever
wanted from a cd-player. So I scrapped the half-finished GTK version
too.

Some time after that, I decided the interface had way too much empty
space in it. That hadn't mattered back in the console days, because
you couldn't do anything with that space anyway. But in X if you
removed the empty space, you could just run it in a smaller xterm
leaving more room for other stuff. So I added an alternate display
mode, using just 41x7 space compared to the 80x16 the old one used.
That's where it stands now. There are some bugs in changing between
programmed/random mode, but I haven't bothered chasing them down since
it's so easy just to restart the program (that and I'm lazy).

2. How to use the program

The program displays a list of most commands available when it's
running and they're pretty self-explanatory. It doesn't say the keys
to select tracks. They are:

F1-F12 : tracks 1-12
1-9    : tracks 11-19
0      : track 20

(F11 and F12 don't work in an xterm for me. Just use 1 or 2 if that's
the case for you too.)

The 'Extra track' command, which is under the 'T' key, adds 20 to the
next track number you choose. So if you want to play track 32, press
'T' and then F2.

Another thing it doesn't say: CTRL+L redraws the screen.

Programmed mode works like this: you toggle it on, select all the
tracks you want to add, and press play. It starts playing those
tracks. If you have random mode on, it plays them in random order. If
you have loop mode on, it loops after it has played them all.

cd-console -h displays help on available command line arguments.

3. Where to send bug reports and patches and whatever

Osku Salerma
osku@iki.fi
http://www.iki.fi/osku/ (my homepage)
http://www.iki.fi/osku/cd-console/ (the program's homepage)

4. People who've contributed in some way

Kimmo Surakka <kusti@cs.tut.fi>
 -sbpcd patches
Walter Vellenich <walterv@eur.autodesk.com>
 -testing
Julian Dunn <jdunn@aquezada.com>
 -FreeBSD support
