The last sign of life from the official [Snack] and [Wavesurfer] maintainers is from the year 2006 and the last release are from 2005. It would be a pity if this wonderful package dies and so we ([UKo] and [lasselasse] and...) want to start a sort of reanimation. The first step is to collect the patches for different errors or enhancements that float around. Then we have to clarify the future development: * will the official maintainers rise their hands and continue the development * will they at least hand the future of snack and wavesurfer to the community * or do we have to make a friendly fork to continue the development? The first patch I will provide is a compile time option, to compile snack without [mp3]-support to make it fully free (in the tcl sense). [DKF]: I advise only waiting a finite amount of time for a response from the official maintainers. Better to have a fork (and apologies) than to let something languish for want of the gumption to get on with it. [LV] So, what is the situation with mp3? I mean, that format is the most commonly used format, cross platform. Now I see talk about a version of snack which doesn't support it, to be more free. I presume this means that someone in the world has a software patent and wants money from people who write MP3s? If so, then what formats are being recommended as a replacement? Surely not [wav], because who wants to get stuck in that format? And not the itunes default format (also proprietary). I know about flac, ogg and a few other formats - but they are lossless, which means the files are horrendously larger, and few digial music devices (and for that matter, few programmatic players) support those formats easily. So what alternatives are commonly usable other than these? ---- !!!!!! %| [Category Package] | [Category Sound] |% !!!!!!