EarPlug Netscape Plugin for Linux Version 1.0
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Written by Jonathan S. Kinnersley, (C) 1999 (jskinnersley@hotmail.com )

No warranties. Use at your own risk.
This software is distributed under the General Public License,
see the file COPYING for more information.
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Installation in brief
---------------------
(This plugin has been tested on RedHat Linux 5.1 and 6.0 and on two 
different sound cards - however, there are no guarantees that it will
work on different Linux systems or soundcards).

1) Type 'make install'
2) If you want to play midi files (I recommend it) type 'cd timidity' and 
   then 'make install' to install timidity (if you don't already have it.
3) re-start Netscape
4) go to http://www.amath.washington.edu/~jsk/EarPlug/index.html
   and test EarPlug out.
5) Enjoy it! (or complain to me if it doesn't work!)

Installing
----------
Log in as root and type 'make install' in this directory and three files, 
earPlug.so, EarPlug.class and FadeEarPlug.class, will be copied into the directory

/usr/lib/netscape/plugins/

You may want to copy them alternatively into 
/usr/local/lib/netscape/plugins/ 
or
~/.netscape/plugins 
if you are not root.

You will need to re-start netscape and check that EarPlug is enabled for
all the MIME-types aiff,au,midi and wav. Do this going to the "About Plugins"
page under the "Help" menu on Netscape. You may need to fiddle with the
Applications page too - choose "Edit"-"Preferences"-"Navigator"-"Applications".
Then find the above MIME types and make sure the EarPlug plug-in is selected 
for them. Note that audio/wav and audio/x-wav both refer to files with the
.wav suffix.

EarPlug should now hopefully play most aiff,au,wav and some snd files.

In order to play midi files you'll need to have timidity installed - in
the next section I've described how to install the version of timidity 
I've included for RedHat Linux, and a cut-down library of patch files.

Timidity
--------

I managed to get timidity to run on my RedHat 5.1 Linux after tweaking
a few things. I have put the binary code in the directory 'timidity'
as well as the configuration files and a small selection of patch files.
To install timidity, simply 'cd timidity' then type 'make install'
as root. This will put the binary 'timidity' in /usr/local/bin
and the patch and configuration files in /usr/local/lib/timidity.
The binary expects the configuration files to be in 
/usr/local/lib/timidity so you'd probably better leave them there.

It is worth down-loading the full patch files - about 8MB worth - 
from, for example, Fredrick Hubinette's Plugger page (which I recommend 
if you want a general purpose plug-in to deal with lots of different 
kinds of graphics files).

You can get the source for timidity from 
http://tcts.fpms.ac.be/~pagel/TIMIDITY/ 
among other places.

Re-Compiling
------------

You'll need the Plugin SDK from netscape - get it from

http://home.netscape.com/comprod/development_partners/plugin_api/index.html

You'll need to take a look at Makefile, which contains calls to Netscape's
javah - I changed the LD_LIBRARY_PATH to point to the old libc5 directory
in RedHat Linux so that javah would run. You'll need to change the variables
SDK and JDK to point to your Plugin SDK and your Java Developers Kit (get
them both free from Netscape).

Then type make......and cross your fingers!

Problems
--------
You'll need the latest version of Netscape from RedHat - 4.06 or 4.08 both
work - earlier versions had problems with Java.

Let me know any problems and I'll try and sort them out - or let me know
how you sorted them out!

Jonathan S. Kinnersley
jskinnersley@hotmail.com

