-- What is libvisual -- Libvisual is a library that acts as a middle layer between applications that want audio visualisation and audio visualisation plugins. Libvisual is aimed at developers who, have a need for audio visualisation and those who actually write the visualisation plugins. By writing an audio visualisation plugin for libvisual every application that uses libvisual is capable of using this plugin. The application handles the end drawing of the graphics and thus rendering done by plugins using libvisual can be drawn everywhere. That is but not limited to: ascii art, sdl, on gl object as a surface , alpha blended or just, anywhere. Libvisual also provides complete easy to use transparant depth transformation, so that even when the display isn't supported by the plugin, libvisual will make it suite. Besides using libvisual for rendering your 2d buffers, you can also render openGL when an openGL context is open. Besides you don't have to render to a buffer. You can also make hardware hacks that do visualisation using libvisual. There are simply no borders -- Why should you use libvisual -- As an application writer, using libvisual provides you an easy way to do audio visualisation. Also when using libvisual you'll have easy access to all the plugins that are written for libvisual. As an plugin writer, libvisual provides a nice host for your plugin. It runs analyzes over the audio input for easy usage and it handles all the displaying stuff through the library and application. And mainly your plugin will be accessible to all the applications. -- License -- The libvisual library that is in libvisual/ is licensed under the LGPL. The example applications in examples/ are licensed under the GPL. The tests in tests/ are licensed under the GPL. -- Development -- If you'd like to use libvisual for your applications, write plugins or hack on the core. Please read HACKING. It contains some very useful information regarding to policies and such. -- Requirement -- The library is quite self containing and there is almost no depency at all to get it working. Libvisual it self does not depend on anything besides glibc ofcourse. Examples/Tests: To compile the examples and most tests libSDL is required. -- Compiling and installing -- Configuration: ./configure To set a prefix use --prefix, other options can be seen by using ./configure --help Building: make This will compile the library. If you want to compile the examples, reconfigure the package with --enable-examples AFTER installing the library. Installing: make install This will install the library.