BMPx

Infobox Software
name=BMPx


caption=Beep Media Player 0.40
developer=BMP Development Team
latest_release_version=0.40.14
latest_release_date=April, 2008
operating_system=Linux, Unix-like
genre=Audio player
license=GNU General Public License
website= [http://bmpx.backtrace.info/] (see article)

BMPx is the successor to the Beep Media Player. BMPx is a free software media player for most modern Unix operating systems.

Introduction

While the original BMP was a fork off XMMS, the new BMPx shares only a minimal amount of code with the original XMMS/BMP codebase, and was rewritten almost entirely from scratch.

BMPx discards the old XMMS/BMP plugin system and uses GStreamer (0.10.x) as the primary audio playback backend. Prior to the 0.14.0 release, BMPx used a Xine based audio playback backend.

There are plans for an SVG based skinning system, codenamed Maybel. The skinning system is still experimental at this point though, and has not been released into the stable builds. There are no plans to support Winamp3/5 "Modern" skins directly however. There exists a library that is in theory capable to load those skins (at least partially so far), called "libWAL", but since the scripting core of Winamp3/5 skins is kept closed source by AOLFact|date=May 2008, it would not be possible to realize a fully working skin loader without significant reverse engineering work.

Instead, the developers decided to define a new skin format, which will also improve on a few shortcomings of the WAL skin format, such as allowing for vectorized objects (in form of SVGs), and vectorized/splined paths along which e.g. sliders can move (think of a wave-shaped volume slider, for example), just to name a few features.

Relationship with BMP (classic) and XMMS

BMPx was rewritten from scratch, borrowing only a handful of utility functions from the BMP (and indirectly XMMS) codebase. Following the move to C++, even these functions have been rewritten to make better use of the language.

While early releases of BMPx retained the WinAmp look through a reimplemented skinning engine which made use of GTK+ widgets more extensively, the developers decided to shelve it in favor of a more integrated, iTunes-inspired look that popular players such as Amarok have adopted.

BMPx website moved

As of December 2007, the project's original domain "beep-media-player.org" expired due to a communication problem. [Derezynski, Milosz. [http://www.last.fm/group/BMPx/forum/28430/_/362915/_/5505205] "Not dead", "BMPx discussion group at Last.fm", 2008-01-01. Retrieved on 2008-01-16.] Since then the website content has been moved to the new domain [http://bmpx.backtrace.info/ bmpx.backtrace.info] .

See also

*Comparison of media players
*Audacious Media Player, a fork of BMP
*List of free audio software
*http://bmpx.backtrace.info/site/BMPx_Homepage

References