

        README for GNOME sound converter application
        ============================================
        
This is my simple sound converter application for the GNOME environment.
It is very rudimentary. It only reads from FLAC and Ogg Vorbis files and
only outputs Ogg Vorbis files. The output files are put into the same
directory as the input files, with the suffix replaced with ".ogg"
(unless that file exists already, in which it adds a number also). The
user interface is raw, but should be simple enough.

This application is somewhat less fast than various command line tools.
Not a whole lot, however, and not enough to make me worry about
performance for the foreseeable future. If you want ultimate
performance, the command line tools are always going to be preferable.


        Supported audio formats
        -----------------------

All file formats that GStreamer can read from should now be supported
(thanks to the wonderful "decodebin" element). The output formats are
more restricted, however, since there is no "encodebin" element to
magically convert to any format we might want.

        Type                Supported?
        
        Ogg Vorbis          yes
        FLAC                yes
        Wave                yes
        MP3                 yes (only 128kbps constant birate)
        
Note that since Debian won't package MP3 encoders due to patent issues,
I have no easy way to implement support for it. I would, however, accept
a (clean) patch, if you can write the support yourself. Alternatively,
if someone wants to give me access to a system that has the "lame"
GStreamer element installed, I should be able to write the support
myself. I am, however, too lazy to install GStreamer and the related
external parts from source, since I have no use for MP3 myself.


        Localization
        ------------
These simple steps allow the translation of soundconverter:
(you'll have to replace LANG with the appropriate 2 letters country code)
 
1. create or update pot file:
xgettext ../soundconverter.py ../soundconverter.glade -o soundconverter.pot

2. create po file for a new language:
cp soundconverter.pot LANG.po

or update a po file:
msgmerge -U LANG.po soundconverter.pot

3. edit the po file with your favorite po editor (gtranslator, kbabel, ...).

4. create and install the binary mo file:
msgfmt LANG.po -o soundconverter_LANG.mo
su -c "cp soundconverter_LANG.mo /usr/share/locale/LANG/LC_MESSAGES/soundconverter.mo"



        Copyright and acknowledgements
        ------------------------------

Copyright 2004 Lars Wirzenius
Copyright 2005 Gautier Portet

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the
Free Software Foundation; version 2 of the License.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General
Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along
with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc.,
59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA
