Q: What is Jinamp?
A: Jinamp is what I use to play my music. I found that MP3 players seemed to come in two types: players that focused on getting the playing done and had very limited shuffling and selection ability (like mpg123), and highly interactive players (like xmms). I wanted a player which would allow me to specify what I wanted to play on the command line in a fairly powerful way, then go into the background and not get in my way. Jinamp is the result.
Q: So why is Jinamp not an MP3 Player?
A: It doesn't contain any decoding code. Instead it invokes an external player such as mpg123 to do all the hard work. In fact there is no reason why it can't be used to play other formats such as Ogg Vorbis or even non-audio data.
Q: Does Jinamp have anything to do with Winamp, Freeamp, etc?
A: No. I was actually rather surprised when I saw how the acronym was going to end up.
Q: Where can I get Jinamp?
A: https://github.com/bmerry/jinamp
Q: How do I install it?
A: Read the file INSTALL for generic instructions. By default a script called playaudio is installed with jinamp, and is used as the default player. It detects mp3 and ogg from the extension and calls mpg123 or ogg123. It also extracts the ID3 tag or Ogg comment and displays the artist and title on tty10.
If you want to use something different, you have a number of options:
- Edit the playaudio script to do what you want. This is the recommended way to do things.
- Run the configure script with --with-player=, where player is your preferred player. Note the you can't specify command line options, which is why a wrapper script like playaudio is useful. Also note that playaudio will still be installed; delete it if you like.
- Change the player at run time, using the --player command line option or in the configuration file.
Q: How do I use it?
A: Type `man jinamp' once you've installed it for usage instructions. If I duplicate them here it'll become a headache to keep them in sync.
Q: Are there any bugs?
A: Probably. If you find any, you can file them on Github, but it's been over a decade since I did any new development on jinamp so they're unlikely to get much attention. See the man page for any known bugs.
Q: How can I contribute?
A: It's been over a decade since I did any active development, so the only way new features are likely to appear in jinamp is if you send a pull request.
I'm a terrible manual writer so if you'd like to write an info page, update the man page or even just a better README than this one I'd appreciate it.
Q: Are there binaries available?
A: Unfortunately not.
You may distribute jinamp under the terms of the GNU General Public Licence, VERSION 2 ONLY.
The text of the GNU GPL can be found in the file COPYING.