README

Introduction
============

This is a port of Monkey's Audio Codec[1] to Unix-like systems. It provides
a library that can be used by other programs and a command line utility.

Monkey's Audio Codec is a lossless compressor for audio files. Files in this
format can typically be recognized by the ".ape" extension. Other popular
lossless compression formats are Xiph.Org's FLAC[2] and Apple's ALAC[3].

[1]: http://www.monkeysaudio.com/
[2]: http://flac.sourceforge.net/
[3]: http://alac.macosforge.org/


Usage
=====

To encode an audio file:

$ mac input.wav output.ape -c1000

To decode an audio file:

$ mac input.ape output.wav -d

See mac(1) for more information.


Reporting bugs
==============

Please use the GitHub issue tracker to post bug reports. If the issue hasn't
been reported yet and you have a patch, you might skip that step and send me
the patch directly and I'll apply it as soon as possible.


Contributing
============

Any help is appreciated, please feel free to contribute. I'll review your
patches and commit them if they are in accordance with this project's goals,
and you'll be credited for the changes (I may ask you to change a few things
things before your patches are accepted, though).

For the time being, send your patches to:

Fernando Tarlá Cardoso Lemos <fernandotcl AT gmail.com>

Please format your patches with "git format-patch" and then attach them to an
e-mail instead of sending the patches inlined in the message. This makes it
easier for me to apply them.

Another option is to fork the project on GitHub and send me pull requests.

If you want to implement a new feature, please ping me first so that we can
discuss it and also so that we don't end up implementing the same thing twice.


Authors
=======

Monkey's Audio Codec was created by:

Matthew T. Ashland <email AT monkeysaudio.com>

It was ported to Linux and further developed by:

Frank Klemm
SuperMMX <SuperMMX AT gmail.com>

Other contributors can be found in the commit messages.


Licensing
=========

Monkey's Audio Codec's licensing terms are controversial[4], to say the last.
The full license agreement terms are found in the LICENSE file.

[4]: http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2007/09/msg00079.html