MikMod

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MikMod

MikMod Player
Developer:	Jean-Paul Mikkers
Latest release:	3.2.2-beta1 / February 2, 2004
OS:	Linux, Unix, Macintosh
Use:	Media player
License:	GNU General Public License
Website:	mikmod.raphnet.net

MikMod is a portable module player originally written by Jean-Paul Mikkers supporting many formats, including MOD, S3M, IT and XM. MikMod is separated into two parts, the frontend which is called MikMod and the library libmikmod.

1 The Frontend
2 libmikmod
3 History
4 Supported formats
5 See also
6 External links

[edit] The Frontend

The frontend used the ncurses library for drawing its contents, thus controlled entirely by the keyboard. It supports a playlist and the shuffle feature, plus seeking in the module file. The frontend also shows the volume bar, used samples and specific file information as authors and messages. Newer versions also have themes.

[edit] libmikmod

Mikmod uses the library libmikmod for playing music. The library is capable of using the underlying computer architecture for playing music e.g. ALSA, ESD, as well as a network protocol and some outputs to raw sound files in various formats. Through its modular design it is very extensible and new formats can be added easily. Because of its powerful, but easy API it is widely supported by game developing libraries such as ClanLib and SDL and there are plugins for various Media Players.

The library is able to transparently play compressed files with ZIP, LHA, and other archive types. Some more advanced features are surround mixing and interpolation.

[edit] History

MikMod was originally written in 1992 by Jean-Paul Mikkers for DOS. With its very portable ANSI C code it quickly became popular. Jean-Paul released MikMod the last time around Christmas '95, but other people picked up where he left. Steve McIntyre created a Unix version of MikMod, Jake Stine was responsible for major updates and creating of version 3.0 . Frank Loemker created the core library and was the Unix maintainer for a while followed by Miodrag Vallet. In 2002 Miodrag didn't have enough time, so development came to a halt for about two years. However, Raphaël Assénat decided to work on MikMod and to bring the project further.

The original MikMod code was copyrighted by Mikkers, but still freely redistributable and modifiable. Eventually he released the code as open source under an informal license. When Miodrag Vallet became maintainer of the code, he decided to license the libmikmod library code under the LGPL, and the player's code under the GPL. MikMod for Java, on the other hand, still maintains the original informal licensing terms, which may also be interpreted as a BSD-style license.

Although the last release was on February 2004, commits to the CVS repository hosted on Sourceforge indicate that there is still some activity done on the code. Furthermore, the stable code should be in good working condition.