INTRODUCTION

This is version 1.0 from 13 December 1997. You can get the current
version and latest news from http://www.c-com.net/~henke/rap.html/

This is "rap" -- Real-time Audio Player for the command line. This is
a little shell script which, used in combination with the
RealPlayer[tm] software from Real Networks, Inc. and the virtual frame
buffer X server from the XFree86 project, allow you to play
RealAudio[tm] content from the command line on a non-graphics-capable
display.

It goes well with lynx, or you can write your own little shell script
to start up your favorite daily radio show when you log on in the
morning. (That's the beauty of command line tools: you can do what
_you_ want, not just what the designers of the tools anticipated you
doing.)

REQUIREMENTS

Things you will need to have in order to run rap:

1) A computer running linux. (This is probably portable to other Unices
   such as FreeBSD, but you will likely have to make some adjustments and
   you still need to fulfill the other requirements.)

2) The RealPlayer[tm] software appropriate to your platform. You can
   probably get this from http://www.realaudio.com.

3) The virtual-frame-buffer X server, Xvfb. This is available from the
   XFree86 project. Look around on ftp://ftp.xfree86.org for a file like
   X???vfb.tgz where ??? is the latest version number.

4) A network connection, sound card and other obvious stuff.

5) Clue. I am not going to explain to you how to set up X, nor how to
   get the RealPlayer[tm] working in general. Get everything working
   under real X first. Once you have that done, then try rap. If you
   have trouble, there are boatloads of XFree86 docs out there.

6) The proc filesystem. (If you have a linux system and you don't have
   this enabled, you have bigger problems than some stupid audio player
   not working. Fix your system.)

7) Bash. There are probably bash-isms in rap. If you use a real Bourne
   shell, you might need to make adjustments.

INSTALLATION

rap is just a shell script, and a pretty trivial one at that. Edit it.
Near the top are some definitions that tell rap how to invoke the X
server and the player. You might want to adjust these for your system,
especially if the server or player are located somewhere that isn't in
your path.

To install, stick the script somewhere you can run it. Hard, eh?

You might want to set rap up as a "viewer" under lynx so you can hear
a RealAudio[tm] link just by selecting it. See the lynx docs for how
to do this (hint: .mailcap, .mime.types). Or, you can use 'd' to
"download" a RealAudio[tm] link, save it to disk as whatever.ram and
then invoke "rap whatever.ram".

USAGE

rap takes the same arguments as the player. (That is, rap passes its
arguments on to the player without change.) Invoke it from the command
line.

It will emit one line of output when it is invoked, another when the
audio starts playing, and a final one when the audio is over. You can
interrupt it at any time.

EXAMPLES

I've included a few example files you can try. They have a .ram
extension. Invoke as follows:

	./rap whatever.ram

(Replace the word "whatever" with the actual name. Yes, I know it's
obvious; I will probably still get email about it.) Note that the
examples are pointers to resources out on the net which are maintained
by others. This means that some or all of the examples may have
stopped working between when I tried them and when you got them.

You can find links to much more RealAudio[tm] content at:
http://www.realaudio.com/

LEGAL CRAP

All trademarks are the property of their respective owners. See
COPYING for license policy and statement of liability. Example .ram
files point to data which is neither owned nor endorsed by the program
author.

CREDITS

Thanks to:

	Linus Torvalds and all Linux contributors
	Richard Stallman and the FSF
	Real Networks, Inc. for providing RealPlayer[tm] for download
	Toby Reed <toby@eskimo.com> for the idea and sample code
	Content providers who give us free audio on the 'net
	XFree86

AUTHOR

The person to blame for this (c)rap is:

	Name: Douglas Henke
	Email: <henke@c-com.net>
	WWW:   http://www.c-com.net/~henke

Bug reports and suggestions are welcome. Flames, B1FFCAPS!!!, stuff
that doesn't meet basic standards of literacy or anything that is MIME
quoted-unreadable will be ignored if you're lucky, or publicly posted
and mocked if you aren't.

If this software doesn't work "out of the box" I want to hear about
it. But please do not turn to me with basic UNIX, Linux, X11 or
RealPlayer[tm] questions that have nothing to do with rap.

BLAME and RANTS

If Real Networks would provide a command line tool in the first place,
you wouldn't need this stupid kludge AND it would require only a
miniscule fraction of the machine resources to work.

Linux is not GNU. Linux has a kernel that boots.

Toby, if people are using traplayer, it's because they don't want a
GUI.  So, why must you insist on trying to cram one down their throats
with that ANSI gibberish?

And where do all of these anencephalic nitwits come from who go out of
their way to make sure their web pages have absolutely no chance at
all to work unless you are using the One True Browser on the One True
Platform? My personal favorites are the pages which _do_ work in lynx
but which say "you MUST use Internet Exploiter to view this."

No, the name of my program has absolutely nothing to do with the genre
of music with which it unfortunately shares a name. Do not send me
mail defending, describing, complaining about or otherwise discussing
rap music.

Yes, I really am just as grumpy as I sound. Please consider bearing
this in mind if you are about to bother me and you haven't made a
reasonable effort to get a clue first.

If you spam me, you will regret it. (Any offers of employment or
consulting work which involves a fee or annual salary under US$100K
will be considered spam.)