Linux/OSX equivalent of windows PlaySound - c#

Due to the lack of a managed .NET api for playing MP3 files, I'm using the PlaySound(byte[]) as P/Invoke and it is now playing the MP3 file successfully.
I can't use any third party libraries due to license restrictions.
Now, I want to port the application to Linux and OS X using Mono but I'm unsure which P/Invokes should be used on those platforms.
An answer to a similar question said
You can just open("/dev/dsp") and write to it. That's as "native syscall" as you can get, I believe.
but I don't know how to do that in C#
Thanks.

You'll need to use the SDL_Mixer library with the SMPEG library for mp3 support. The code should be reusable across all OS's.

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Creating .Net Wrappers for Windows API and COM DLLs

Let me start by saying that I don't know what I don't know at this point, so rather than specific answers, I'm also looking for better questions to ask, I think. My .Net/C# is solid enough, and my C/C++ is meh.
Lately, I'm finding that there are no libraries in the standard .Net framework to accomplish certain tasks, and while it's easy enough to download a third party library, I'd like to understand how to do it myself if one doesn't already exist.
In one recent case, I need to deal with MIDI in windows at a relatively low-level, and I accidentally found out that "winmm.dll" is the library I'll need to use by downloading a .net wrapper for MIDI and browsing through the source. I understand that I'll have to make a wrapper class and do the whole P/Invoke thing to make that happen.
The next thing I did was to search for documentation on the Windows API to figure out what was going on in the mystery box of "winmm.dll," and to my delight, there was a whole Windows SDK that I was able to download and read through. I went through the "getting started" section of "Windows Development" which covered some of the basics via C++. It talked a bit about COM, windows header files, and I know enough C++ to get the gist.
Now, I need help connecting the dots on a few issues:
1) The Windows SDK, so far, seems to suggest that I want to program to specific header files rather than the dlls themselves, but the .net wrappers I've found typically point to a specific .dll rather that a header file...
/// <summary>
/// Returns the number of MIDI input devices on this system.
/// </summary>
/// Win32 docs: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms711608(VS.85).aspx
[DllImport("winmm.dll", SetLastError = true)]
public static extern UInt32 midiInGetNumDevs();
I was under the impression that a header file and DLL needed to be in the same folder, but the windows SDK includes a folder with all the windows header files, and no DLLs (I'm guessing the registry comes into play here for mapping to specific libraries?)? How do those header files eventually get mapped to actual libraries, and why does it seem like I don't even need to deal with header files to create a .Net wrapper?
2) I can't seem to find documentation on winmm.dll, but I have found references to the functions I'll likely need in the "Windows API" list in the Windows SDK, and I'm pretty sure that the code for those functions are in winmm.dll. How do I find the documentation for the specific libraries I'll need to begin creating my wrapper? If I didn't know that I was going to need winmm.dll to access windows MIDI functionality, how could I have figured that out myself?
3) Some DLLs are COM, some are plain windows DLLs, some are .net DLLs... how can I tell the different going forward? It seems that creating wrappers for the former two would require a different approach.
4) There is no page on MSDN for "Winmm.dll" listing all of its API, and I assume there's a good and practical reason for that, but I'm not sure what it is? I'm used to .Net land where I can figure out what a library does and how to use it almost without effort.
Thanks in advance for any insights.
The bible on this is Adam Nathans excellent book '.Net and COM the complete interoperability guide'
Includes PInvoke and several audio-type examples
1) The windows API documentation includes the header, library, and dll file for each method/enum/etc. I just didn't scroll down far enough when I read through to notice this. A header file doesn't necessarily have to be in the same directory as the dll; its contents are simply copy/pasted into the .c file when the program is compiled. The part I was missing here was the linking stage of compilation which I read about here
2) The documentation was there--I just had to look for it a little bit harder.
3) How can I detect the type of a dll? (COM, .NET, WIN32)
4) The api for audio could theoretically span multiple dlls, so the best course of action is to find the API documentation, find the methods you want to wrap, then figure out what dlls those methods are in, and then import each of those DLLs.

Write/Read file in my iPhone app Shared File

I wrote an app on my iPhone. It's a more portable and smaller version of my pc software. I activated the File Sharing feature on my app so now I can transfer files through iTunes. But I want my pc software to be able to read or write files to that shared folder on my iPhone without having to do it manually through iTunes.
I have big constraints:
I can't use a Jailbroken iPhone/iPod/iPad
The vast majority of my customers don't have Internet access (It's a farm management software so even cellular are not available in some area)... :(
I heard there is a way using Manzana and MobileDevice.dll (itunesmobiledevice.dll). I don't really know how to use these dll. I tried to use Manzana a little but I can't access my folder since it's not a jailbroken iPhone.. Can someone help me with a little bit of code example?
Or is there other ways to make my iPhone app communicate with my C# application using the USB cable without internet access or Wifi?
mobiledevice.codeplex.com. This project should let you send and retrieve files from the phone
I'd suggest seeing if you can use the iTunes scripting interface. Add the COM reference iTunes 1.1 Type Library to a project and you can control many parts of itunes automatically. I can't find the documentation for it, but you can play around with the library and see if there is something to access the file sharing section.
Here's a decent introduction to using it:
http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/7723/Controlling-iTunes-through-COM

How to capture from webcam in Linux using Mono?

How can I capture a frame from a video-4-linux device (e.g.: /dev/video0) using Mono and C#? OS is Angstrom Linux running on BeagleBoard.
I have done v4l2 capture using C. This is probably the only language I would chose to do it in as well. There are a lot of low level calls you need to make into the driver. You need to map kernel memory into your app and copy buffers. You also have to set a ton of configuration for the device. If you need to I would consider writing a C library and using Platform Invoke. Another alternative is to write two programs and send the data over to your C# app via some sort of IPC.
You can use Emgu CV for this, it specifically advertises that it can be compiled using Mono.
Main Site: http://www.emgu.com/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
Compiling in Mono: http://www.emgu.com/wiki/index.php/Compiling_with_Monodevelop
Sample Code for Capturing Webcam Video: http://www.emgu.com/wiki/index.php/Camera_Capture_in_7_lines_of_code
I am not familiar with Mono or C# on linux, but you may have to write an interface module that exposes the diver API, or a reasonable abstraction. I think you then might be able to import the module in the C# code. It looks like Mono does support the DLLImport.
(http://www.mono-project.com/Interop_with_Native_Libraries)

Pure C# Silverlight video encoding lib?

Is out there any Pure C# Silverlight video encoding lib?
By video I mean not only pictures compressor but also audio compressor...
So to say I'm looking for some kind of lib not only for compressing but also for sinchronisation etc... so to say I give it a web cam it gives me a conteiner!)
You're certainly not going to want to do this in safe code, unless you've got a lot of buffer memory, as the encoder would run glacially slowly.
One option is to run with elevated permissions, and then you can interact with external COM packages - see http://forums.silverlight.net/forums/p/156112/350144.aspx for some useful links
Here's a link from stackoverflow on the general issue that says pretty much the same thing - Using Native dlls in C# Com wrapper and Use dll in silverlight
If you can create a C# wrapper around calls to any native encoding DLL of your choice, then you can put the wrapper assembly in the GAC and you should be good to go - this would of course mean you need an additional install step to get this assembly into the gac, which is outside the 'normal' silverlight experience
To make this separation easier to implement and use, we introduced what we call the simple sandboxing APIs in the .NET Framework 2.0, which create each application domain with a given permission set for its sandbox and a list of fully trusted assemblies that are not in the Global Assembly Cache (GAC), as all assemblies in the GAC are already fully trusted.
taken from http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc765416.aspx - dated, but I believe still accurate
As of February 15, 2010 -- it appears that there is not a built-in way to do this in Silverlight.
Here is a thread that discusses this issue.
Rene Schulte has an example, EdgeCam Shots - Saving Silverlight 4 Webcam Snapshots to JPEG that saves the Webcam stream as sequential JPEG images.

How can I install a printer using .NET?

I have an .INF for a virtual printer that I need to install from a .NET Application. I have done this before using batch scripts, but I am looking for a snippet of code to do this in the .NET Framework.
There's nothing particular about the printer .INF, so any code that installs a printer from an INF in C# or VB.NET will work.
I believe this is possible via interop to native win32 APIs, but I've found its much, much easier just to use a System.Diagnostics.Process() to call into printui.dll via:
rundll32.exe printui.dll,PrintUIEntry /?
Perhaps you're already using that in the mentioned batch script, but if not the parameters are documented here: PrintUI.DLL User's Guide and Reference
Just be sure to test it against all operation systems you need to support. Some options either do not exist in all Windows releases or have been renamed (although I think they're the more esoteric options - installing an .INF will likely work across the board).
You are going to want to look at the WMI objects available. These give you a finer control of the local machine settings. Take a look at the WMI code creator from Microsoft, I believe this will generate some example code you can leverage to solve your problem.
Administering Printer Settings in C# for Flexible Printing
see this article, it uses an MS Platform SDK DLL called PRNADMIN to manage printers, printer-drivers, printer-ports, ...etc.
I personally use it in a commercial project to install a printer driver and change the printer port to local port to intercept the Postscript. and it works like a Charm.
Alternatively you can use some pre-installed vbscripts that come with windows in C:\Windows\system32\Printing_Admin_Scripts and here is a an articles for them:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc771846.aspx
This is not the ideal solution, but if nobody else answers, you can create a temp batch file and invoke that through C#/VB.NET.
Someone else will probably know a more natural way to do this.
You will need to wrap the setup APIs using PINVOKE or a native COM object.

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