RealPlayer, RAP, and XVFB

["T. V. Raman" <raman@Adobe.COM>]

To all blinuxers--

The whole thread about rap and realaudio 
is painful to watch.

The rap script is a simple script designed to automate the
somewhat repetitive task of making sure there is an X server
running and launching the realplayer.  The reason for the
problems reported here are symptomatic of  this.

 Rather than complaining after simply downloading the
script, you would be better off with such tools if you:

1) Looked at the script to see what it does
--in fact the readme file that comes with rap documents
exactly what it does--

2) test and get each individual piece working in your
   environment in this case Xvfb etc 
--there is no valid excuse 
such as "I did not have access" for not doing this--
because you can start xvfb from any shell running inside
   emacspeak

3) finally use the packaged rap  script so you dont have to repeat all the steps
   each time--

If you are not comfortable with doing this, go use M$
software where you will have the option of clicking yes, no
or cancel --

And by the way, the rap script nukes the Xvfb server each
time you stop real audio -- if you play realaudio a lot, you
may just want to start up Xvfb running at boot time and have
the rap script only launch the realaudio player.

Also, someone on this list mentioned the realaudio player
getting into stutter mode and speculated that this had
something to do with the windowing system-- that stutter is
typically caused by the network or machine getting
overloaded and has little to do with the windowing system.
If it does go to stutter mode, just stop and start the
player-- it will catch up.

-- 
Best Regards,
--raman

      Adobe Systems                 Tel: 1 (408) 536 3945   (W14-612)
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    Disclaimer: The opinions expressed are my own and in no way should be taken
as representative of my employer, Adobe Systems Inc.
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