Music on Console - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Music On Console is an ncurses

Ncurses

ncurses is a programming library that provides an API which allows the programmer to write text user interfaces in a terminal-independent manner. It is a toolkit for developing "GUI-like" application software that runs under a terminal emulator...

-based console

Console application

A console application is a computer program designed to be used via a text-only computer interface, such as a text terminal, the command line interface of some operating systems or the text-based interface included with most Graphical User Interface operating systems, such as the Win32 console in...

audio player

Audio player (software)

An audio player is a kind of media player for playing back digital audio, including optical discs such as CDs, SACDs, DVD-Audio, HDCD, audio files and streaming audio....

for Linux

Linux

Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...

/UNIX

Unix

Unix is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna...

written by Damian Pietras. It is designed to be powerful and easy to use, with a command structure and window layout inspired by the Midnight Commander

Midnight Commander

GNU Midnight Commander is a free cross-platform orthodox file manager and a clone of Norton Commander originally created by Miguel de Icaza.Midnight Commander is licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License.-Design:...

console file manager.http://www.linuxondesktop.in/2011/06/music-on-console-midnight-commander.html It is very configurable, supporting ALSA, OSS

Open Sound System

The Open Sound System is an interface for making and capturing sound in Unix or Unix-like operating systems. It is based on standard Unix devices...

or JACK

JACK Audio Connection Kit

JACK is a professional sound server daemon that provides real-time, low latency connections for both audio and MIDI data between applications that implement its API...

outputs, customizable color schemes, interface layouts, key bindings, and tag

ID3

ID3 is a metadata container most often used in conjunction with the MP3 audio file format. It allows information such as the title, artist, album, track number, and other information about the file to be stored in the file itself....

parsing. MOC has a single playlist (which can be saved in m3u

M3U

M3U is a computer file format that stores multimedia playlists. It is supported by many applications.An M3U file is a plain text file that specifies the locations of one or more media files. Each line carries one specification...

format) and has the concept of a 'music directory' but it has no library file where metadata

Metadata

The term metadata is an ambiguous term which is used for two fundamentally different concepts . Although the expression "data about data" is often used, it does not apply to both in the same way. Structural metadata, the design and specification of data structures, cannot be about data, because at...

is saved. Instead this information is read from the files themselves as needed upon access or during idle time. If the playlist has extended m3u information, that will be read.

Its text-only nature consumes very little system resources, and it uses an output buffer in a separate thread

Thread (computer science)

In computer science, a thread of execution is the smallest unit of processing that can be scheduled by an operating system. The implementation of threads and processes differs from one operating system to another, but in most cases, a thread is contained inside a process...

to avoid skipping under high system loads and to enable gapless playback. Normally, exiting the program only closes the interface - the program daemon

Daemon (computing)

In Unix and other multitasking computer operating systems, a daemon is a computer program that runs as a background process, rather than being under the direct control of an interactive user...

izes itself so the music continues playing in the background.http://www.ubuntugeek.com/moc-music-on-console-console-audio-player-for-linuxunix.html

This client/server architecture is similar to MPD

Music Player Daemon

Music Player Daemon is a music player server.- Design :MPD simply runs in the background playing music from its playlist. Client programs communicate with MPD to manipulate playback, the playlist, and the database...

and XMMS2

XMMS2

XMMS2 is a new generation of the XMMS audio player. It is a new design, written from scratch, separate from the XMMS codebase...

, but unlike those players, the MOC daemon is not accessible over a network, and does not have an open API

Application programming interface

An application programming interface is a source code based specification intended to be used as an interface by software components to communicate with each other...

to communicate with alternate clients. This has both advantages and disadvantages as, while MOC can't be controlled by a remote graphical client (it can, of course, be used via SSH

Secure Shell

Secure Shell is a network protocol for secure data communication, remote shell services or command execution and other secure network services between two networked computers that it connects via a secure channel over an insecure network: a server and a client...

), it can securely range the entire filesystem, which is not advisable by a remotely- and anonymously-accessible server such as MPD.

The binary is named mocp for "MOC Player" because of a conflict with a Qt utility called moc.

See also