legacy/libburn/trunk/doc/comments

/**
   @author Mario Danic, Thomas Schmitt

   @mainpage Libburnia Documentation Index

   @section intro Introduction

Libburnia is an open-source project for reading, mastering and writing
optical discs. For now this means only CD-R and CD-RW.
Support for DVD+RW is emerging.


The project comprises of several more or less interdependent parts which
together strive to be a usable foundation for application development.
These are libraries, language bindings, and middleware binaries which emulate
classical (and valuable) Linux tools.

Our scope is currently Linux 2.4 and 2.6 only. For ports to other systems
we would need : login on a development machine resp. a live OS on CD or DVD,
advise from a system person about the equivalent of Linux sg or FreeBSD CAM,
volunteers for testing of realistic use cases.

We have a workable code base for burning data and audio CDs. The burn API is
quite comprehensively documented and can be used to build a presentable
application.
We have a functional binary which emulates the core use cases of cdrecord in
order to prove that usability, and in order to allow you to explore libburn's
scope by help of existing cdrecord frontends.

@subsection components The project components (list subject to growth, hopefully):

- libburn  is the library by which preformatted data get onto optical media.
           It uses either /dev/sgN (e.g. on kernel 2.4 with ide-scsi) or
           /dev/hdX (e.g. on kernel 2.6).
           libburn is the foundation of our cdrecord emulation.

- libisofs is the library to pack up hard disk files and directories into a
           ISO 9660 disk image. This may then be brought to CD via libburn.
           libisofs is to be the foundation of our upcoming mkisofs emulation.

- cdrskin  is a limited cdrecord compatibility wrapper for libburn.
           cdrecord is a powerful GPL'ed burn program included in Joerg
           Schilling's cdrtools. cdrskin strives to be a second source for
           the services traditionally provided by cdrecord.
           cdrskin does not contain any bytes copied from cdrecord's sources.
           Many bytes have been copied from the message output of cdrecord
           runs, though.
           See cdrskin/README for more.

- "test"   is a collection of application gestures and examples given by the
           authors of the library features. The main API example of libburn
           is named test/libburner.c .
           Explore these examples if you look for inspiration.

We plan to be a responsive upstream. Bear with us.


   @section using Using the libraries

Our build system is based on autotools.
User experience tells us that you will need at least autotools version 1.7.

To build libburn and its subprojects it should be sufficient to go into
its toplevel directory and execute

-  ./bootstrap  (needed if you downloaded from SVN)

-  ./configure

-  make

To make the libraries accessible for running resp. developing applications 

-  make install

Both libraries are written in C language and get built by autotools.
Thus we expect them to be useable by a wide range of Linux-implemented
languages and development tools.


@section libburner Libburner

libburner is a minimal demo application for the library libburn 
(see: libburn/libburn.h) as provided on  http://libburn.pykix.org .
It can list the available devices, can blank a CD-RW and
can burn to CD-R or CD-RW.
New: burning to DVD+RW (single data track, single session only).

It's main purpose, nevertheless, is to show you how to use libburn and also
to serve the libburnia team as reference application. libburner does indeed
define the standard way how above three gestures can be implemented and
stay upward compatible for a good while.

   @subsection libburner-help Libburner --help
<pre>
Usage: test/libburner
       [--drive <address>|<driveno>|"-"]  [--audio]
       [--blank_fast|--blank_full]  [--try_to_simulate]
       [--multi]  [one or more imagefiles|"-"]
Examples
A bus scan (needs rw-permissions to see a drive):
  test/libburner --drive -
Burn a file to drive chosen by number, leave appendable:
  test/libburner --drive 0 --multi my_image_file
Burn a file to drive chosen by persistent address, close:
  test/libburner --drive /dev/hdc my_image_file
Blank a used CD-RW (is combinable with burning in one run):
  test/libburner --drive /dev/hdc --blank_fast
Burn two audio tracks
  lame --decode -t /path/to/track1.mp3 track1.cd
  test/dewav /path/to/track2.wav -o track2.cd
  test/libburner --drive /dev/hdc --audio track1.cd track2.cd
Burn a compressed afio archive on-the-fly:
  ( cd my_directory ; find . -print | afio -oZ - ) | \
  test/libburner --drive /dev/hdc -
To be read from *not mounted* CD via: afio -tvZ /dev/hdc
Program tar would need a clean EOF which our padded CD cannot deliver.
</pre>
libburner has two companions, telltoc and dewav, which help to perform some
peripheral tasks of burning.

telltoc prints a table of content (sessions, tracks and leadouts), it tells
about type and state of CD media, and also is able to provide the necessary
multi-session information for program mkisofs option -C. 
See: test/telltoc --help.

dewav extracts raw byte-swapped audio data from files of format .wav (MS WAVE)
or .au (SUN Audio). See example in libburner --help.

   @subsection libburner-source Sourceode of libburner

Click on blue names of functions, structures, variables, etc in oder to
get to the according specs of libburn API or libburner sourcecode.
 
@include libburner.c
*/