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- GNU ccd2cue
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- description: GNU ccd2cue
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- GNU ccd2cue Next: Preface , Up: (dir) [ Contents ][ Index ] The GNU CCD sheet to CUE sheet converter GNU ccd2cue is a CCD sheet to CUE sheet converter. It supports the full extent of CUE sheet format expressiveness, including mixed-mode discs and CD-Text meta-data. This manual is for GNU ccd2cue version 0.5 (March 13, 2015). This package is a component of the GNU Operating System and is developed by the GNU Project. Copyright © 2010, 2013, 2014, 2015 Bruno Félix Rezende Ribeiro Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled “GNU Free Documentation License.”. • Preface : Motivation, program definition and document organization; • Overview : Description, distribution, obtaining, contact, bug reports, contribution, donation and hacking; • Release : Information specifically relevant for the current release; • Operation : How the program works from the user's perspective; • Tutorial : Easy and fast to learn case by case; • Invocation : Formal and canonical list of options and meanings; • Burning : An important warning and advice about burning the resultant CUE sheet; READ THIS! Appendices: • Compact Disc fields : Common concepts to all sheets; • CCD sheet format : Unofficial and partial format reference; • CUE sheet format : Reference; • GNU Free Documentation License : The license for this documentation; GNU philosophy: • The GNU Manifesto : • The GNU Project : • Linux and the GNU system : • Why Software Should Not Have Owners : • Why Free Software Needs Free Documentation : Indexes: • Index : Concepts and reference material. Table of Contents Preface 1 Overview 1.1 Description 1.2 Distribution 1.3 Getting a copy 1.4 Contact 1.5 Bug reporting 1.6 Contributing 1.7 Donating 1.8 Hacking 2 Release 2.1 Announcement 2.2 News 2.3 To do 2.4 Authors 2.5 Thanks 2.6 Donors 3 Operation 4 Tutorial 5 Invocation 6 Burning Appendix A Compact Disc fields A.1 CATALOG A.2 MODE A.3 FLAGS A.4 ISRC Appendix B CCD sheet format B.1 CloneCD B.1.1 Version B.2 Disc B.2.1 TocEntries B.2.2 Sessions B.2.3 DataTracksScrambled B.2.4 CDTextLength B.2.5 CATALOG B.3 CDText B.3.1 Entries B.3.2 Entry B.4 Session B.4.1 PreGapMode B.4.2 PreGapSubC B.5 Entry B.5.1 Session B.5.2 Point B.5.3 ADR B.5.4 Control B.5.5 TrackNo B.5.6 AMin B.5.7 ASec B.5.8 AFrame B.5.9 ALBA B.5.10 Zero B.5.11 PMin B.5.12 PSec B.5.13 PFrame B.5.14 PLBA B.6 TRACK B.6.1 MODE B.6.2 ISRC B.6.3 INDEX B.6.4 FLAGS Appendix C CUE sheet format C.1 CATALOG C.2 CDTEXTFILE C.3 TITLE C.4 PERFORMER C.5 SONGWRITER C.6 FILE C.7 TRACK C.8 FLAGS C.9 ISRC C.10 PREGAP C.11 INDEX C.12 POSTGAP C.13 REM Appendix D GNU Free Documentation License Appendix E The GNU Manifesto Appendix F The GNU Project Appendix G Linux and the GNU system Appendix H Why Software Should Not Have Owners Appendix I Why Free Software Needs Free Documentation Index Next: Overview , Previous: Top , Up: Top [ Contents ][ Index ] Preface Manifesto: On the internet there is a gigantic quantity of optical disc image files in numerous formats. Countless times we need to burn some of them. Some time ago I needed it, but I came across a file format extremely irritating for a Free Software user like me: a CD layout descriptor file, with .ccd suffix, generated by a proprietary software called CloneCD. I searched the internet for a way to burn that file on the GNU+Linux-Libre system, but I only found a lot of people asking for a solution on a lot of forums, and getting the unanimous answer: no way! At first I could not believe at that point there was no option. Then, with a little bit of patience and research, I wrote some code to convert that files to a format much more common and accessible, an ad-hoc standard in the GNU operating system: the CUE sheet format. So I could burn a lot of what I wanted! I wondered whether it would be useful for others… and here is the result! — Bruno Félix Rezende Ribeiro (oitofelix) There is a well known and widely employed proprietary optical disc authoring software called CloneCD 1 which is intended to make a nearly exact copy of audio and/or data optical discs for archival and/or reproduction purposes. When making a copy of an optical disc to hard disk that program can output three files: audio/data raw image, sub-channel data and layout description. The GNU ccd2cue program operates exclusively on the latter to produce a hopefully equivalent 2 layout description in the CUE sheet format and possibly a companion CD-Text meta-data file. Since there are free software packages that can easily and fully handle CUE sheet files, this frees the user from the temptation to use a proprietary program or from the burden of searching for the desired disc data into a supposedly more free software friendly format. One such program capable of burning a raw image file laid out by a CUE sheet file, as well as converting a CUE sheet file to the TOC sheet format, is cdrdao . Notably, GNU ccd2cue can handle: Mixed-mode CCD sheet file 6 ; CD-Text meta-data 7 ; Track special sub-code flags 8 ; This manual is split in two major logical segments: instruction and reference. In the former resides the manual content targeted to instructional, reasonably tutorial, use. It is composed of the following chapters: Overview General information about purpose, distribution, copying, community, contribution and donation for this package. Release Presents information specifically relevant for the current release or subject to change between releases. Operation Teach how the program works from the user's perspective; Tutorial Guides the reader step-by-step in using the program for practical common use cases. Invocation Concerns ccd2cue invocation syntax, accepted options and their meanings. Burning Gives an important warning and advice about burning the resulting CUE sheet. READ THAT! In the latter, one can find the reference material comprised of the following appendices: Compact Disc fields Describes some Compact Disc information that are common concepts to CCD and CUE sheet formats. CCD sheet format Describes the CCD sheet format (at least the part we know about — it is a reverse engineering process, and you are encouraged to help). CUE sheet format Describes the CUE sheet format. Now that you are acquainted with the program and documentation, HAPPY HACKING! Next: Release , Previous: Preface , Up: Top [ Contents ][ Index ] 1 Overview This chapter briefly explains for what this package is intended, gives relevant considerations regarding dependencies, configuration, build, installation and use, describes which are the rules for its distribution, how to get a copy of it, how to contact the community, how to fill bug reports, how to contribute to the package, how to make donations to support its development and how to get started hacking the code. Bear in mind that instructions in this chapter are package-specific; for general and in-depth configuration, build and installation instructions refer to the file INSTALL present in the top-level directory of the source distribution. If you have checked out the source tree from the VCS repository see Hacking . • Description : What this package is all about; • Distribution : The user's right to modify and redistribute; • Getting a copy : GNU FTP server and VCS; • Contact : Mailing list and IRC; • Bug reporting : Support and bug trackers; • Contributing : Several ways to help program's development; • Donating : Supporting developer's work; • Hacking : Get started with the VCS checkout; For more information about this program you can visit its home page at https://www.gnu.org/software/ccd2cue/ . If you want to receive notifications about new releases of this program or important issues related to it, subscribe to its mailing list, as described in Contact , or subscribe to the package atom feed https://savannah.gnu.org/news/atom.php?group=ccd2cue . Next: Distribution , Up: Overview [ Contents ][ Index ] 1.1 Description GNU ccd2cue is a CCD sheet to CUE sheet converter. It supports the full extent of CUE sheet format expressiveness, including mixed-mode discs and CD-Text meta-data. It plays an important role for those who need to use optical disc data which is only available in the proprietary sheet format CCD, but don't want to surrender their freedom. It fills an important gap in the free software world because before its conception it was impossible to use complex forms of optical disc data laid out by CCD sheets in a whole/holy free operating system. The GNU ccd2cue documentation is also intended to be a reference documentation for both sheet format specifications. That way we can reverse engineer the secret CCD sheet proprietary format only once and then make the information available for developers in order to benefit all free software users that want their software to be interoperable. The CUE sheet format is not a secret, but with this package we take the opportunity to ensure that its specification is available under a free documentation license for the sake of the whole free software community. Next: Getting a copy , Previous: Description , Up: Overview [ Contents ][ Index ] 1.2 Distribution This program is free software ; this means that everyone is free to use it and free to redistribute it under certain conditions. This program is not in the public domain; it is copyrighted and there are restrictions on its distribution, but these restrictions are designed to permit everything that a good cooperating citizen would want to do. What is not allowed is to try to prevent others from further sharing any version of this program that they might get from you. The precise conditions are found in the GNU GPL (General Public Licence). The program manual is covered by the GFDL ( GNU Free Documentation License ). This license is similar in spirit to the GNU General Public License, but is more suitable for documentation. Next: Contact , Previous: Distribution , Up: Overview [ Contents ][ Index ] 1.3 Getting a copy One way to get a copy of this program is from someone else who has it. You need not ask for our permission to do so, or tell any one else; just copy it. You may also receive this program when you buy a computer. Computer manufacturers are free to distribute copies on the same terms that apply to everyone else. These terms require them to give you the full sources, including whatever changes they may have made, and to permit you to redistribute the program received from them under the usual terms of the GNU General Public License. In other words, the program must be free for you when you get it, not just free for the manufacturer. If you have access to the Internet, you can get the latest distribution version of this program at https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/ccd2cue/ . Please, use a mirror if possible; you will be automatically redirected to the nearest mirror at http://ftpmirror.gnu.org/ccd2cue/ . A VCS repository, where the development takes place, is also available. It maintains the full history of modifications of every single source file. You can checkout any given revision of any file or get a snapshot of the entire source tree in a particular desired state. Special build tools, as described in Hacking , are required to build from those checkouts, though. Notably, to stay up to date with the latest developments in the source tree, you can anonymously checkout the repository with the following command: git clone git://git.savannah.gnu.org/ccd2cue.git Next: Bug reporting , Previous: Getting a copy , Up: Overview [ Contents ][ Index ] 1.4 Contact You can get in touch with other users and the developers of this program by subscribing to its mailing list. Anyone is welcome to join the list; to do so, visit ccd2cue's help and support mailing list web interface . To post a message to all the list members, send email to ccd2cue@gnu.org . To see the collection of prior postings to the list, visit its archive . You can use this list for all discussion, including asking for help and bug reporting, although the preferred method for reporting bugs is sending a mail to bug-ccd2cue@gnu.org , the ccd2cue's bug reporting mailing list. See Bug reporting . If you feel somewhat chatty, eager for a somewhat more instantaneous response from community, you can join us on our friendly IRC channel: ‘ irc://irc.freenode.net/ccd2cue '. Next: Contributing , Previous: Contact , Up: Overview [ Contents ][ Index ] 1.5 Bug reporting If you came across some problem and need help you can contact the community as described in Contact . If you think you found a bug, but is not quite sure about it, you can ask for support sending a mail to ccd2cue@gnu.org . We will revise your post, advise you and take the appropriate measures. If you are confident you have found a bug, you can submit a bug report directly to bug-ccd2cue@gnu.org . You can subscribe to this ccd2cue's bug reporting mailing list at its web interface . To see the collection of prior reported bugs, visit its archive . Please, when reporting a bug include enough information for the maintainers to reproduce the problem. Generally speaking, that means: The contents of any input files necessary to reproduce the bug and command line invocations of the program(s) involved (crucial!). A description of the problem and any samples of the erroneous output. The version number of the program(s) involved (use --version ). Hardware, operating system, and compiler versions ( uname -a ). Unusual options you gave to configure, if any (see config.status ). Anything else that you think would be helpful. Next: Donating , Previous: Bug reporting , Up: Overview [ Contents ][ Index ] 1.6 Contributing This program is a collaborative effort and we encourage contributions from anyone and everyone — your help is very much appreciated. You can help in many ways: Donate to developers in order to support their work. See Donating . Write documentation. We are specially in need to complete the CCD sheet format specification. Help users in the mailing list and IRC channel. Find and report bugs. See Bug reporting . Fix reported bugs. Implement new feature ideas. Write test cases. Check the documentation against the implementation. Translate the program strings to other languages. You can join the development team to contribute code and documentation at the development page . Patches are most welcome, but contributed code should follow the GNU Coding Standards . If it doesn't, we'll need to find someone to fix the code before we can use it. It is also necessary that the contributor be willing to assign their copyright to the FSF, since the developers plan to make it officially part of the GNU operating system and they want FSF to enforce the program's license. To get started hacking see how to hack . Next: Hacking , Previous: Contributing , Up: Overview [ Contents ][ Index ] 1.7 Donating If you find this program useful, please send a donation to its developers to support their work. If you use this program at your workplace, please suggest that the company make a donation. We appreciate contributions of any size – donations enable us to spend more time working on this package, and help cover our infrastructure expenses. If you'd like to make a donation of any value, please send it to the following Bitcoin address: 12sKDaBNYekQuRPdrpnbUL4YRDKrzMnY62 Since we aren't a tax-exempt organization, we can't offer you a tax deduction, but for all donations over 0.05 BTC, we'd be happy to recognize your contribution on the donors page and on DONORS file for the next release. We are also happy to consider making particular improvements or changes, or giving specific technical assistance, in return for a substantial donation over 0.5 BTC. If you would like to discuss this possibility, write to me at oitofelix@gnu.org . Another possibility is to pay a software maintenance fee. Again, write to me about this at oitofelix@gnu.org to discuss how much you want to pay and how much maintenance we can offer in return. Thanks for your support! Previous: Donating , Up: Overview [ Contents ][ Index ] 1.8 Hacking The development sources are available through VCS at Savannah: https://savannah.gnu.org/git/?group=ccd2cue If you are getting the sources from a VCS (or change configure.ac ), you'll need to have Automake, Autoconf and Gettext installed to (re)build. You'll also need help2man. All of these programs are available from https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/ . After getting the VCS sources, and installing the tools above, you can run ./bootstrap && ./configure && make to do a fresh build. After that first time, running make should suffice to rebuild the program with your changes. See file INSTALL . When modifying the sources, or making a distribution, more is needed, as follows: This distribution also uses Gnulib to share common files, stored as a submodule in git. When updating gettext, besides the normal installation on the system, it is necessary to run gettextize -f in this hierarchy to update the po/ infrastructure. After doing so, rerun gnulib-tool --import since otherwise older files will have been imported. See Gnulib Manual , for more information. When committing changes to the repository always create an entry in the doc/release/latest-news.texi file for any user-visible changes or additions made. This file is intended to provide the latest release news for the NEWS.texi and ANNOUNCEMENT.texi files to avoid duplication of information and syncing work. After a release is made the news items should be moved to the NEWS.texi file and another news list should be built from scratch in the ANNOUNCEMENT.texi file. Next: Operation , Previous: Overview , Up: Top [ Contents ][ Index ] 2 Release In this chapter one can find information that are specific to the current release or subject to change between releases. It presents the features this package acquired over time, problems that affect its overall usage and what possibly could happen to it — by our wishes — in the future. Last but not least, people whose contribution for this package are noteworthy are acknowledged. Present and Future: • Announcement : Published announcement message of this new release; • News : User-visible changes since previous versions; • To do : Features we want to see implemented someday; People: • Authors : List of major contributors; • Thanks : List of minor contributors; • Donors : People who supported the development by donations; Next: News , Up: Release [ Contents ][ Index ] 2.1 Announcement GNU ccd2cue is a CCD sheet to CUE sheet converter. It supports the full extent of CUE sheet format expressiveness, including mixed-mode discs and CD-Text meta-data. It plays an important role for those who need to use optical disc data which is only available in the proprietary sheet format CCD, but don't want to surrender their freedom. It fills an important gap in the free software world because before its conception it was impossible to use complex forms of optical disc data laid out by CCD sheets in a whole/holy free operating system. The GNU ccd2cue documentation is also intended to be a reference documentation for both sheet format specifications. That way we can reverse engineer the secret CCD sheet proprietary format only once and then make the information available for developers in order to benefit all free software users that want their software to be interoperable. The CUE sheet format is not a secret, but with this package we take the opportunity to ensure that its specification is available under a free documentation license for the sake of the whole free software community. News Danish, German, Ukrainian and Vietnamese translations. Support for localized Unix manual pages. Feature suggested by Mario Blättermann (German translator). Respectable Unix manual pages. Localizable --help meta-variables. Bug reported by Mario Blättermann. Numerous grammatical and markup corrections to the user's manual. Patch submitted by Karl Berry. Make target announcegnu which automatically sends a signed announcement message to info-gnu@gnu.org , ccd2cue@gnu.org and coordinator@translationproject.org mailing lists when a release is ready. This target can only be made in VCS checkouts. Make target fetchpo which fetches from the Translation Project the latest PO files available . This target can only be made in VCS checkouts. Latest release news, manifesto, package's description and version in a single point of maintenance. Package meta-information, as release date and build system version, automatically generated at configuration time. Announcement message in user's manual and homepage. Make target distdir can be made when top-level documentation files are missing. Download Here are the compressed sources and a GPG detached signature: https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/ccd2cue/ccd2cue-0.5.tar.gz https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/ccd2cue/ccd2cue-0.5.tar.gz.sig Use a mirror for higher download bandwidth: http://ftpmirror.gnu.org/ccd2cue/ccd2cue-0.5.tar.gz http://ftpmirror.gnu.org/ccd2cue/ccd2cue-0.5.tar.gz.sig Use a .sig file to verify that the corresponding file (without the .sig suffix) is intact. First, be sure to download both the .sig file and the corresponding tarball. Then, run a command like this: gpg --verify ccd2cue-0.5.tar.gz.sig If that command fails because you don't have the required public key, then run this command to import it: gpg --recv-keys 0x28D618AF --keyserver hkp://keys.gnupg.net and rerun the gpg --verify command. This release is signed by Bruno Félix Rezende Ribeiro . His key fingerprint is 7CB1 208C 7336 56B7 5962 2500 27B9 C6FD 28D6 18AF . This release was bootstrapped with the following tools: GNU Autoconf 2.69 GNU Automake 1.14.1 GNU Texinfo 5.2 Links Homepage https://www.gnu.org/software/ccd2cue/ Atom feed https://savannah.gnu.org/news/atom.php?group=ccd2cue Help and support mailing list ccd2cue@gnu.org Bug reporting mailing list bug-ccd2cue@gnu.org IRC channel irc://irc.freenode.net/ccd2cue Support Tracker https://savannah.gnu.org/support/?group=ccd2cue Bug Tracker https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?group=ccd2cue Development page https://savannah.gnu.org/projects/ccd2cue/ Next: To do , Previous: Announcement , Up: Release [ Contents ][ Index ] 2.2 News This document contains a list of user-visible changes worth mentioning. The changes are split and ordered by version in reverse chronological order. If you want to receive notifications about new releases of this program or important issues related to it, subscribe to the mailing list, as described in Contact , or subscribe to the package atom feed https://savannah.gnu.org/news/atom.php?group=ccd2cue . 0.5 Danish, German, Ukrainian and Vietnamese translations. Support for localized Unix manual pages. Feature suggested by Mario Blättermann (German translator). Respectable Unix manual pages. Localizable --help meta-variables. Bug reported by Mario Blättermann. Numerous grammatical and markup corrections to the user's manual. Patch submitted by Karl Berry. Make target announcegnu which automatically sends a signed announcement message to info-gnu@gnu.org , ccd2cue@gnu.org and coordinator@translationproject.org mailing lists when a release is ready. This target can only be made in VCS checkouts. Make target fetchpo which fetches from the Translation Project the latest PO files available . This target can only be made in VCS checkouts. Latest release news, manifesto, package's description and version in a single point of maintenance. Package meta-information, as release date and build system version, automatically generated at configuration time. Announcement message in user's manual and homepage. Make target distdir can be made when top-level documentation files are missing. 0.4 The code repository moved from CVS to Git. Mailing lists were re-purposed. Now bug-ccd2cue@gnu.org is exclusively used for bug reporting and ccd2cue@gnu.org for user support. Fixed bad wording in --help text. Bug reported by Benno Schulenberg of the Translation Project. Fixed potential crash caused by calling error function with wrong arguments inside error handling routines. Bug first noticed by Rosa (GNU/)Linux maintainers. Fixed documentation distribution bug in which the INSTALL file didn't get redistributed. Bug reported by Darren S.. Added distgnu Make target which aids the maintainer in uploading release tarballs to the GNU ftp site. It only can be made from VCS checkouts. Likewise, the homepage Make target now can only be made from VCS checkouts. Therefore the exclusive infrastructure for building the package's homepage doesn't get distributed. Fixed build system bug in which configure didn't detect the absence of help2man for maintainer builds. Improved maintainer-clean Make target effectiveness. 0.3 The program ccd2cue has become a GNU package, and therefore is now dubbed GNU ccd2cue. Its code and documentation have been updated to reflect such remarkable occurrence. The target homepage generates the package homepage primarily from release documentation. Some interesting GNU philosophy essays were added to documentation. Various bugs in the program and documentation were fixed. 0.2 Support for all features of the CUE sheet format, prominently CD-Text meta-data and track sub-code flags. Internationalization support using gettext. Compliance with the GNU Coding Standards and the GNU Maintaining Standards. See GNU Coding Standards and GNU Maintaining Standards . Noteworthy changes are the use of the GNU build system for the ease and consistency of build and installation (see INSTALL file), documentation in the Texinfo format, notably an user manual that can be outputted in numerous formats including, but not limited to, printable pdf, info, html and plain text. Traditional Unix man page automatically generated by help2man . Doxygen for in-depth source code documentation. That can be used to output pdf, html and numerous other formats documenting the inner workings of the code. GNU compliant command line parsing provided by Argp. It is no more necessary to provide arguments in the fixed order of command's synopsis; the arguments can be given in any order and long options are accepted. The command line options suffered the following changes to comply with GNU Coding Standards: -o Has companion long option --output . -i Has companion long option --image . -h Changed to -? with companion long option --help . -v Changed to -V with companion long option --version . The following command line options were added to cover new features: -c cdt-file --cd-text= cdt-file Writes CD-Text data to cdt-file . -a --absolute-file-name Uses absolute file name deduction. --usage Gives a short usage message. It is no longer required to specify -i option in every invocation. It is enough to specify only one file name on the command invocation, as an option or non-option argument, since the remaining needed file names are now deduced automatically. 0.1 Initial release; Next: Authors , Previous: News , Up: Release [ Contents ][ Index ] 2.3 To do This chapter contains a list of ideas and features which would be nice to see implemented some day. If you are ready to start working on any of these TODO items, we appreciate your help; please write to bug-ccd2cue@gnu.org so we can be aware that the problem is being addressed, and talk with you how to do it best. It is best to consult the latest version of this file in the program source code repository. See Getting a copy and Hacking for instruction on how to access it. Since the developers of this program are willing to assign the copyright of this package to FSF, please be prepared to sign legal papers to transfer the copyright on your work to the FSF too. For more details on this and some more practical details about getting involved, see Contributing . As well as the issues listed here, there are bug reports, which are effectively to-do items too — that can use your help — at the bug tracker web interface . See Bug reporting for more information. CCD sheet format specification There is a specification of the CCD sheet format in the program manual. That specification is the result of a reverse engineering process and is incomplete; pretty much only the fields that affects the CUE sheet generation are known. It would be very nice to decipher the entirety of the format, and document it, so we can bring into light whether there is room for improvement in the conversion process, and to open new possibilities for more expressive formats like the TOC sheet. TOC sheet format As the name implies the program GNU ccd2cue is designed to convert CCD sheets only to the CUE sheet format. This format has some well know limitations regarding the sub-channel data, which apparently can be mitigated by more expressive formats. There is one sheet format called “TOC” that is very common, well documented and accessible to free software in the GNU system. It seems that format was designed to handle the sub-channel data that is the major flaw of the CUE sheet format. In fact it seems like a super-set of the CUE sheet format. For that reason we would like to have a ccd2toc in complement of the GNU ccd2cue. But is that another project? If not, we have to change the name. ;-) Next: Thanks , Previous: To do , Up: Release [ Contents ][ Index ] 2.4 Authors This chapter contains a list of people that made sufficiently large contributions to development that they can be regarded as truly authors of the program. This program would not be what it is today without the invaluable help of these people, to whom we would like to say: THANK YOU VERY MUCH! The names are listed in chronological order of contribution. Each person's contact information, usually email, and a summary of that person's contribution is put in per correspondent section. For contributions that does not matter for copyright purposes, e.g., minor or non-source code contributions, see Thanks . If you would appreciate your own name listed here, please contribute! See Contributing . Bruno Félix Rezende Ribeiro (oitofelix) oitofelix@gnu.org He is the original and only author so far. Next: Donors , Previous: Authors , Up: Release [ Contents ][ Index ] 2.5 Thanks This chapter contains a list of people that reported problems, suggested improvements or submitted relatively small portions of actual code. This program would not be what it is today without the invaluable help of these people, to whom we would like to say: THANK YOU! The names are listed in chronological order of contribution. Each person's contact information, usually email, and a summary of that person's contribution is put in per correspondent section. For contributions that does matter for copyright purposes, e.g., major source code contributions, see Authors . If you would appreciate your own name listed here, please contribute! See Contributing . Lucas Sköldqvist (frusen) frusen@gungre.ch He pointed out a syntactically incorrect expression in the manifesto, kindly tested pre-release versions and reported bugs. Previous: Thanks , Up: Release [ Contents ][ Index ] 2.6 Donors This chapter contains a list of people that supported development by means of donation. This program would not be what it is today without the invaluable help of these people, to whom we would like to say: THANK YOU VERY MUCH! If you would appreciate your own name listed here, please donate! See Donating . Name Email BTC Lucas Sköldqvist (frusen) frusen@gungre.ch 0.28833329 Next: Tutorial , Previous: Release , Up: Top [ Contents ][ Index ] 3 Operation First, it is important to distinguish between the various files involved in the conversion operation accomplished by GNU ccd2cue. The whole process basically consists of a conversion of the CCD set of files into a CUE set of files, whose meaning, by suffix, is described below: In the CCD set all files have the same basename and the respective suffixes are mandatory. It is composed of: .img Audio/data raw image (hereafter called image file ); .sub Sub-channel data (hereafter called sub-channel file ); .ccd Layout description (hereafter called CCD sheet file ); In the CUE set all files need not have the same basename and the respective suffixes are just an optional default. It is composed of: .bin The same image file as above with the traditional suffix; .cdt CD-Text meta-data file (hereafter called CD-Text file ); .cue Layout description (hereafter called CUE sheet file ); The GNU ccd2cue program never touches any of the files in the CCD set; not even to rename the image file to use the traditional .bin suffix. However it will still work with other software because the image file is explicitly referenced inside the CUE sheet file. The idea is to take the least intrusive approach, e.g., to have both sets of files simultaneously without any interfering with each other. Although we are against the use and development of any proprietary program, including those which can handle CCD sheets 9 , it can be useful to have the original CCD sheet for reference, in case the conversion process is improved in a subsequent release; or more expressive destination formats 10 become supported; or just for debugging. The GNU ccd2cue program has just one non-trivial operation: the conversion. And this only relies on the information contained inside the CCD sheet file to generate the equivalent CUE sheet file. Thus, GNU ccd2cue does not enforce, and in fact does not even check, if you have the sub-channel file, or even more important, the actual image file. Therefore, although it is possible to generate seamlessly a CUE sheet file from a lone CCD sheet file, it is a must to have also, at least, the corresponding image file in order to burn the disc. While the image file is not used by GNU ccd2cue but is referenced in the produced CUE sheet file, the sub-channel file is not used nor referenced at all in the CUE sheet file. The CUE sheet format was not designed to describe the information found in the sub-channel file and most optical disc authoring software seems to ignore it when guided by a CUE sheet file. Therefore, do not expect to obtain an exact copy, at the sub-channel level, using the CUE sheet file to guide your burning software. Nevertheless, for the vast majority of practical uses the extra sub-channel data contained in the sub-channel file can be fully ignored producing yet usable discs for the intended application. Notice however that that does not mean CUE sheet format is incapable of describing any sub-channel data; in fact it describes the most important ones. Hence all that data is available for GNU ccd2cue not inside the sub-channel file but rather in the CCD sheet file itself; the CD-Text meta-data is such a case — the CD-Text file is produced from decoded sub-channel information available inside the CCD sheet file. Next: Invocation , Previous: Operation , Up: Top [ Contents ][ Index ] 4 Tutorial The most ordinary use case is when you have a CCD set of files and just want to generate a CUE sheet file in order to burn or otherwise access the data inside the image file. Supposing your CCD sheet file is called free-as-in-freedom.ccd, all you need is the command: ccd2cue -o free-as-in-freedom.cue free-as-in-freedom.ccd Remember that if your CCD sheet file name has spaces or unusual characters, like ‘ $ ', you are better quoting the whole name with ‘ ' '. Naturally the CUE sheet file don't need to have the same base name as the CCD sheet file. You can give an adequate CUE sheet output file name, at your discretion, to the -o ( --output ) option. If you omit the -o option entirely as in ccd2cue free-as-in-freedom.ccd the result is that the yielding CUE sheet is written to the standard output, giving you the chance to pipe it out to another command or to use the shell to redirect it to a file, as you would do without it using the -o option. The same thing is accomplished by passing - as an argument to option -o . Can you guess what happens if we omit the CCD sheet input file specification as well? If you answered that GNU ccd2cue will read the CCD sheet input from standard input and write the correspondent CUE sheet output to standard output, unfortunately you are wrong. It would be nice if it behaved that way, but there is an inherent design drawback: the CUE sheet needs to reference an image file and possibly a CD-Text file; in that way, how could it have any clue about those file names? For that reason it is always necessary to supply at least one file name in an option or non-option argument, so GNU ccd2cue can deduce the remaining file names needed. The deduction algorithm is very simple: get the file name supplied, in the following preference order: CCD sheet input file name (non-option argument); CUE sheet output file name ( -o , --output ); Image file name ( -i , --image ); CD-Text file name ( -c , --cd-text ); conserve only its base name and concatenate the canonical suffix. Therefore, if you want to read the CCD sheet input from standard input and write the CCD sheet output to standard output, it is enough to just make explicit the name of a image name, possibly with a nonstandard suffix, regardless of the actual existence of the image file, as in ccd2cue -i free-as-in-free-speech.img where free-as-in-free-speech.img is the image file name. On the other hand, you can use the -i ( --image ) in conjunction with the CCD sheet file name and/or CUE sheet file name just to override the image file name deduction. As expected, the argument - in place of the CCD sheet file name, will also make GNU ccd2cue read its CCD sheet input from standard input. If, for some weird reason, you want to move the CUE sheet file around while keeping the image file in its original place and yet be able to normally use this pair as if they were in the same directory, you can use the option -a ( --absolute-file-name ). That option will make the file name deduction algorithm explained above retain the absolute directory name for each file; however, as a consequence of this approach, it will only work for file names not directly supplied, but deduced by the program. When GNU ccd2cue detects CD-Text data information inside the CCD sheet, it outputs a CD-Text file, whose name is determined by the same file name deduction rules just described, unless overridden by the option -c ( --cd-text ). It is not possible to output the binary CD-Text data to standard output, however. Next: Burning , Previous: Tutorial , Up: Top [ Contents ][ Index ] 5 Invocation The command ccd2cue is used to convert CCD sheet files in CUE sheet files. It is invoked as follow: ccd2cue [ OPTION …] [ ccd-file ] The input file, referred as ccd-file , must exist. If ccd-file is ‘ - ', or omitted, standard input is used. Output options: -c --cd-text= cdt-file Write CD-Text data to cdt-file . -o --output= cue-file Write output to cue-file . While the main output file cue-file is always generated, the cdt-file is created only when there is CD-Text info. If cue-file is ‘ - ', or --output is omitted, standard output is used. Conversion options: -a --absolute-file-name Use absolute file name deduction. -i --image= img-file Reference img-file as the image file. The img-file is a reference to a data file required only at burning time and thus its existence is not enforced at the conversion stage. Help options: -? --help Give a help list. --usage Give a short usage message. -V --version Print program version. Mandatory or optional arguments to long options are also mandatory or optional for any corresponding short options. Next: Compact Disc fields , Previous: Invocation , Up: Top [ Contents ][ Index ] 6 Burning READ THIS! If you have burned a CD from a CUE sheet produced by this program and all audio tracks became only senseless static noise, you may need to tell your burning software to swap the byte order of all samples sent to the CD-recorder. This can be accomplished with (for example) the --swap option when using the cdrdao program. Experience has shown that at least for mixed-mode discs it is necessary to use that option when burning, otherwise you will almost certainly waste a CD. Supposing you want to burn a CD using the cdrdao program and a CUE sheet file named gnu.cue , and wisely want to ensure the correct behavior of your burnt disc, use the command: cdrdao write --swap --speed 1 --eject gnu.cue That way cdrdao will swap the byte order of audio samples, cautiously burning in the smallest possible speed and will eject your CD when it is done. Next: CCD sheet format , Previous: Burning , Up: Top [ Contents ][ Index ] Appendix A Compact Disc fields This appendix describes some Compact Disc information that are common concepts to both sheet formats. Each following manual section corresponds to a Compact Disc field or characteristic. For each of them is explained its meaning, the values it can assume and is given an example where appropriate. Cross references to both CCD and CUE sheets applicable elements follow each description. Fields: • CATALOG : MCN (Media Catalog Number); • MODE : Track data type; • FLAGS : Track special sub-code flags; • ISRC : ISRC (International Standard Recording Code); Next: MODE (Compact Disc fields) , Up: Compact Disc fields [ Contents ][ Index ] A.1 CATALOG Description MCN (Media Catalog Number); Value UPC (Universal Product Code) / EAN (European Article Number) encoded; exactly 13 decimal digits; Example 7954234679231 CCD sheet See CATALOG (Disc CCD Section) . CUE sheet See CATALOG (CUE Command) . This field is usually used on CD-ROM's mastered for commercial production. Next: FLAGS (Compact Disc fields) , Previous: CATALOG (Compact Disc fields) , Up: Compact Disc fields [ Contents ][ Index ] A.2 MODE Description Track data type; Value The following modes are defined: Value Description AUDIO Audio/Music (2352 — 588 samples) CDG Karaoke CD+G (2448) MODE1/2048 CD-ROM Mode 1 Data (cooked) MODE1/2352 CD-ROM Mode 1 Data (raw) MODE2/2048 CD-ROM XA Mode 2 Data (form 1) * MODE2/2324 CD-ROM XA Mode 2 Data (form 2) * MODE2/2336 CD-ROM XA Mode 2 Data (form mix) MODE2/2352 CD-ROM XA Mode 2 Data (raw) CDI/2336 CDI Mode 2 Data CDI/2352 CDI Mode 2 Data The modes marked with ‘ * ' are not defined in the original CUE sheet format specification. CCD sheet See MODE (TRACK CCD Section) CUE sheet See TRACK (CUE Command) . Next: ISRC (Compact Disc fields) , Previous: MODE (Compact Disc fields) , Up: Compact Disc fields [ Contents ][ Index ] A.3 FLAGS Description Track special sub-code flags; Value The following flags (possibly more than one): Value Description DCP D igital C opy P ermitted 4CH 4 CH annel audio PRE PRE -emphasis enabled (audio tracks only) SCMS S erial C opy M anagement S ystem For non-audio tracks the special flag DATA is used implicitly. CCD sheet See FLAGS (TRACK CCD Section) . CUE sheet See FLAGS (CUE Command) . Previous: FLAGS (Compact Disc fields) , Up: Compact Disc fields [ Contents ][ Index ] A.4 ISRC Description ISRC (International Standard Recording Code) ; Value 12 characters: the first five characters are upper case alphanumeric; the last seven are numeric only. The code has the format: CCOOOYYSSSSS , where: C Country code; O Owner code; Y Year; S Serial number; Example USRMS8371421 CCD sheet See ISRC (TRACK CCD Section) . CUE sheet See ISRC (CUE Command) . This field is usually used on CD-ROM's mastered for commercial production. Next: CUE sheet format , Previous: Compact Disc fields , Up: Top [ Contents ][ Index ] Appendix B CCD sheet format Warning: This appendix describes the CCD sheet format. This description is the result of observation, deduction and tests. Although there is quite some uncertainty about the semantics of a number of elements, it is expected that every applicable entry, or otherwise relevant element — for the production of the corresponding CUE sheet — is well understood. Due to its proprietary nature, no authoritative, free and public available reference of the CCD sheet format do exist. Whereas the information contained herein is thought to be accurate, there is no guarantee of its correctness. The CCD sheet format is an instance of the INI format ; a simple text file with a basic structure composed of sections and properties . The following syntactic rules apply to CCD sheets: Every section has a name in square brackets that appears on a line by itself (as in [CDText] ). Every property has a name and a value (in the form name = value — there is no space around ‘ = ') and belongs exclusively to one section: the nearest upward section. There is no explicit end-of-section delimiter (sections end at the next section declaration or end-of-file) and sections cannot be nested. A ‘ ' (space) can occur in a indexed section (resp. property) name followed by a number (like in [Session 3] (resp. INDEX 0=17524 )). Each non-indexed section (resp. property) come out only once per file (resp. section). Indexes of sections and properties starts at the minimum value allowed and increment sequentially. Each following manual section corresponds to a CCD sheet section , and each subsection within to a valid property of its parent section. The sequence in which sections should be declared in the CCD sheet is the same given below. For each section and property is explained its meaning, and for properties is made explicit its value type. A ‘ (?) ' indicates the correspondent property value is not more than believed to be right or is a guess against which no counter example do exist so far. In the end of each section description is presented a code example of that section using each available property just described. Indexed sections and properties are those whose syntax references index . Unless otherwise noted, each section and property are mandatory. The correlation with CUE sheet format is expressed by means of cross references to the relevant CUE commands. Sections: • CloneCD : Properties of the disc authoring software; • Disc : Properties that apply to the entire disc; • CDText : CD-Text meta-data; • Session : Unknown meaning; • Entry : Table of Contents entry; • TRACK : Track layout and meta-data; Next: Disc (CCD Section) , Up: CCD sheet format [ Contents ][ Index ] B.1 CloneCD Syntax [CloneCD] Description Properties of the disc authoring software; Example [CloneCD] Version=3 Properties: • Version : The major version of CloneCD which made the CCD sheet; Up: CloneCD (CCD Section) [ Contents ][ Index ] B.1.1 Version Syntax Version= value Description The major version of CloneCD which made the CCD sheet; Value Positive integer; Next: CDText (CCD Section) , Previous: CloneCD (CCD Section) , Up: CCD sheet format [ Contents ][ Index ] B.2 Disc Syntax [Disc] Description Properties that apply to the entire disc; Example [Disc] TocEntries=18 Sessions=1 DataTracksScrambled=0 CDTextLength=810 CATALOG=5479154328763 Properties: • TocEntries : Number of Entry sections; • Sessions : Number of Session sections; • DataTracksScrambled : Unknown meaning; • CDTextLength : The size in bytes of the correspondent CD-Text file discarding one byte of the terminating null character; • CATALOG : MCN (Media Catalog Number); Next: Sessions (Disc CCD Section) , Up: Disc (CCD Section) [ Contents ][ Index ] B.2.1 TocEntries Syntax TocEntries= value Description Number of Entry sections; Value Strictly positive integer; Next: DataTracksScrambled (Disc CCD Section) , Previous: TocEntries (Disc CCD Section) , Up: Disc (CCD Section) [ Contents ][ Index ] B.2.2 Sessions Syntax Sessions= value Description Number of Session sections; Value Strictly positive integer; Next: CDTextLength (Disc CCD Section) , Previous: Sessions (Disc CCD Section) , Up: Disc (CCD Section) [ Contents ][ Index ] B.2.3 DataTracksScrambled Syntax DataTracksScrambled= value Description Unknown meaning; Value Non-negative integer (?); Next: CATALOG (Disc CCD Section) , Previous: DataTracksScrambled (Disc CCD Section) , Up: Disc (CCD Section) [ Contents ][ Index ] B.2.4 CDTextLength Syntax CDTextLength= value Description The size in bytes of the corresponding CD-Text file discarding one byte for the terminating null character; 0 if there is no CD-Text meta-data; See CDTEXTFILE (CUE Command) , for more information on the CD-Text file. Value Given by the formula: (16 + 2) * [CDText].Entries Where: 16 → CD-Text entry length (in bytes); 2 → CRC code length (in bytes); [CDText].Entries → Value of Entries property of CDText section; CUE sheet See CDTEXTFILE (CUE Command) . Previous: CDTextLength (Disc CCD Section) , Up: Disc (CCD Section) [ Contents ][ Index ] B.2.5 CATALOG Syntax CATALOG= value Description MCN (Media Catalog Number); Value UPC/EAN encoded; exactly 13 decimal digits; see CATALOG (Compact Disc fields) . CUE sheet See CATALOG (CUE Command) . Next: Session (CCD Section) , Previous: Disc (CCD Section) , Up: CCD sheet format [ Contents ][ Index ] B.3 CDText Syntax [CDText] Description CD-Text meta-data; this section is entirely omitted if there is no CD-Text meta-data. Example [CDText] Entries=3 Entry 0=80 00 00 00 54 72 69 6f 20 41 63 6f 75 73 74 69 Entry 1=81 00 16 00 54 72 69 6f 20 41 63 6f 75 73 74 69 Entry 2=8f 00 2a 00 00 01 0f 00 16 14 00 00 00 00 00 00 CUE sheet See CDTEXTFILE (CUE Command) . See TITLE (CUE Command) . See PERFORMER (CUE Command) . See SONGWRITER (CUE Command) . Properties: • Entries : Number of Entry properties inside its CD-Text section; • Entry : A CD-Text entry; Next: Entry (CDText CCD Section) , Up: CDText (CCD Section) [ Contents ][ Index ] B.3.1 Entries Syntax Entries= value Description Number of Entry properties inside CDText section; Value Strictly positive integer; Previous: Entries (CDText CCD Section) , Up: CDText (CCD Section) [ Contents ][ Index ] B.3.2 Entry Syntax Entry index = value Description CD-Text entry; Value The nth index is exactly the nth CD-Text file entry, omitting the 2 byte CRC code and additionally — in the case of the last entry — the final null character. It is encoded as a space-separated sequence of 16 hexadecimal numbers of two digits without ‘ 0x ' base indicator. Each pair of digits represents one byte. Index Non-negative integer; Next: Entry (CCD Section) , Previous: CDText (CCD Section) , Up: CCD sheet format [ Contents ][ Index ] B.4 Session Syntax [Session index ] Description Unknown meaning; Index Strictly positive integer; Example [Session 1] PreGapMode=0 PreGapSubC=0 Properties: • PreGapMode : Unknown meaning; • PreGapSubC : Unknown meaning; Next: PreGapSubC (Session CCD Section) , Up: Session (CCD Section) [ Contents ][ Index ] B.4.1 PreGapMode Syntax PreGapMode= value Description Unknown meaning; Value Non-negative integer (?); Previous: PreGapMode (Session CCD Section) , Up: Session (CCD Section) [ Contents ][ Index ] B.4.2 PreGapSubC Syntax PreGapSubC= value Description Unknown meaning; Value Non-negative integer (?); Next: TRACK (CCD Section) , Previous: Session (CCD Section) , Up: CCD sheet format [ Contents ][ Index ] B.5 Entry Syntax [Entry index ] Description Table of Contents entry; Index Non-negative integer; Example [Entry 0] Session=1 Point=0xa0 ADR=0x01 Control=0x00 TrackNo=0 AMin=0 ASec=0 AFrame=0 ALBA=-150 Zero=0 PMin=1 PSec=0 PFrame=0 PLBA=4350 Every property whose value is an integer in hexadecimal base uses ‘ 0x ' notation. Properties: • Session : Unknown meaning; • Point : Unknown meaning; • ADR : Unknown meaning; • Control : Unknown meaning; • TrackNo : Unknown meaning; • AMin : Unknown meaning; • ASec : Unknown meaning; • AFrame : Unknown meaning; • ALBA : Unknown meaning; • Zero : Unknown meaning; • PMin : Unknown meaning; • PSec : Unknown meaning; • PFrame : Unknown meaning; • PLBA : Unknown meaning; Next: Point (Entry CCD Section) , Up: Entry (CCD Section) [ Contents ][ Index ] B.5.1 Session Syntax Session= value Description Unknown meaning; Value Strictly positive integer; Next: ADR (Entry CCD Section) , Previous: Session (Entry CCD Section) , Up: Entry (CCD Section) [ Contents ][ Index ] B.5.2 Point Syntax Point= value Description Unknown meaning; Value Hexadecimal non-negative integer; Next: Control (Entry CCD Section) , Previous: Point (Entry CCD Section) , Up: Entry (CCD Section) [ Contents ][ Index ] B.5.3 ADR Syntax ADR= value Description Unknown meaning; Value Hexadecimal non-negative integer; Next: TrackNo (Entry CCD Section) , Previous: ADR (Entry CCD Section) , Up: Entry (CCD Section) [ Contents ][ Index ] B.5.4 Control Syntax Control= value Description Unknown meaning; Value Hexadecimal non-negative integer; Next: AMin (Entry CCD Section) , Previous: Control (Entry CCD Section) , Up: Entry (CCD Section) [ Contents ][ Index ] B.5.5 TrackNo Syntax TrackNo= value Description Unknown meaning; Value Non-negative integer; Next: ASec (Entry CCD Section) , Previous: TrackNo (Entry CCD Section) , Up: Entry (CCD Section) [ Contents ][ Index ] B.5.6 AMin Syntax AMin= value Description Unknown meaning; Value Non-negative integer; Next: AFrame (Entry CCD Section) , Previous: AMin (Entry CCD Section) , Up: Entry (CCD Section) [ Contents ][ Index ] B.5.7 ASec Syntax ASec= value Description Unknown meaning; Value Non-negative integer; Next: ALBA (Entry CCD Section) , Previous: ASec (Entry CCD Section) , Up: Entry (CCD Section) [ Contents ][ Index ] B.5.8 AFrame Syntax AFrame= value Description Unknown meaning; Value Non-negative integer; Next: Zero (Entry CCD Section) , Previous: AFrame (Entry CCD Section) , Up: Entry (CCD Section) [ Contents ][ Index ] B.5.9 ALBA Syntax ALBA= value Description Unknown meaning; Value Negative integer; Next: PMin (Entry CCD Section) , Previous: ALBA (Entry CCD Section) , Up: Entry (CCD Section) [ Contents ][ Index ] B.5.10 Zero Syntax Zero= value Description Unknown meaning; Value Non-negative integer; Next: PSec (Entry CCD Section) , Previous: Zero (Entry CCD Section) , Up: Entry (CCD Section) [ Contents ][ Index ] B.5.11 PMin Syntax PMin= value Description Unknown meaning; Value Non-negative integer; Next: PFrame (Entry CCD Section) , Previous: PMin (Entry CCD Section) , Up: Entry (CCD Section) [ Contents ][ Index ] B.5.12 PSec Syntax PSec= value Description Unknown meaning; Value Non-negative integer; Next: PLBA (Entry CCD Section) , Previous: PSec (Entry CCD Section) , Up: Entry (CCD Section) [ Contents ][ Index ] B.5.13 PFrame Syntax PFrame= value Description Unknown meaning; Value Non-negative integer; Previous: PFrame (Entry CCD Section) , Up: Entry (CCD Section) [ Contents ][ Index ] B.5.14 PLBA Syntax PLBA= value Description Unknown meaning; Value Non-negative integer; Previous: Entry (CCD Section) , Up: CCD sheet format [ Contents ][ Index ] B.6 TRACK Syntax [TRACK index ] Description Track layout and meta-data; Index Strictly positive integer; Example [TRACK 1] MODE=0 ISRC=DKKH50800101 INDEX 1=0 FLAGS=DCP 4CH PRE SCMS CUE sheet See TRACK (CUE Command) . Properties: • MODE : Track mode/type/length; • ISRC : ISRC (International Standard Recording Code); • INDEX : Index within a track; • FLAGS : Special sub-code flags for this track; Next: ISRC (TRACK CCD Section) , Up: TRACK (CCD Section) [ Contents ][ Index ] B.6.1 MODE Syntax MODE= value Description Track mode; see MODE (Compact Disc fields) . Value Non-negative integer; Value Mode 0 AUDIO 1 MODE1/2352 (?) 2 MODE2/2352 CUE sheet See TRACK (CUE Command) . Next: INDEX (TRACK CCD Section) , Previous: MODE (TRACK CCD Section) , Up: TRACK (CCD Section) [ Contents ][ Index ] B.6.2 ISRC Syntax ISRC= value Description ISRC (International Standard Recording Code); see ISRC (Compact Disc fields) . Value 12 characters: the first five characters are alphanumeric; the last seven are numeric only. CUE sheet See ISRC (CUE Command) . Next: FLAGS (TRACK CCD Section) , Previous: ISRC (TRACK CCD Section) , Up: TRACK (CCD Section) [ Contents ][ Index ] B.6.3 INDEX Syntax INDEX index = value Description Index within a track; Index Non-negative integer; Value Non-negative integer indicating the number of frames (1/75th of a second). CUE sheet See INDEX (CUE Command) . Previous: INDEX (TRACK CCD Section) , Up: TRACK (CCD Section) [ Contents ][ Index ] B.6.4 FLAGS Syntax FLAGS= value Description Special sub-code flags for this track; Value A space-separated string of the flags described in FLAGS (Compact Disc fields) ; CUE sheet See FLAGS (CUE Command) . Next: GNU Free Documentation License , Previous: CCD sheet format , Up: Top [ Contents ][ Index ] Appendix C CUE sheet format The CUE sheet format is a simple text file composed solely of CUE commands, its respective arguments, blank spaces and lines. The following syntactic rules apply to CCD sheets: Each command take one, and only one, entire line. Commands are case insensitive. Commands can be indented at will. Blank lines are ignored. There are three contexts in a CUE sheet file: None , File and Track . The first of them is not introduced by any command, and the last two are introduced by FILE and TRACK commands, respectively. The only commands that pertain to more than one context, namely None and Track, are the CD-Text related commands TITLE , PERFORMER and SONGWRITER . The only commands that can appear multiple times within its contexts are FILE , TRACK , INDEX and REM . The valid positions of a command are determined by the following rules: A command can only appear after the introduction of the context it pertains to. Within that context the position of a command is determined by its specific positioning rules. Each following manual section corresponds to a CUE command. For each of them is explained its meaning, context structure and positioning rules. At the end of each section is an example of use and a reference to the correlated CCD sheet format element, if there is any. The meaning of the context tables is: Parents The contexts to which this command pertains; ‘ None ' here names the context introduced by no command. Multiple Whether multiple instances of this command within a single instance of its context is allows; value is ‘ Yes ' or ‘ No '. Children The commands that pertains to the context introduced by this command; ‘ None ' if there is not one. The meaning of the positioning tables is: After This command must appear after the commands listed here, if they are present. The expression ‘ None ' means nothing. Before This command must appear before the commands listed here, if they are present. The expression ‘ None ' means nothing. Commands: • CATALOG : Define MCN (Media Catalog Number). • CDTEXTFILE : Specify the CD-Text file. • TITLE : Set the title of a track or entire disc. • PERFORMER : Write the name of a performer in a track or entire disc. • SONGWRITER : Write the name of a songwriter in a track or entire disc. • FILE : Declare the source of audio/data. • TRACK : Define a track. • FLAGS : Set special sub-code flags for the current track. • ISRC : Specify the ISRC (International Standard Recording Code) of the current track. • PREGAP : Set the length of track pre-gap. • INDEX : Define a file pre-gap, a track index or sub-index. • POSTGAP : Set the length of track post-gap. • REM : Comment the CUE sheet. Next: CDTEXTFILE (CUE Command) , Up: CUE sheet format [ Contents ][ Index ] C.1 CATALOG CUE Command: CATALOG mcn Define MCN (Media Catalog Number) of the disc as mcn . The argument mcn is a number composed of 13 decimal digits in UPC/EAN encoding as described in CATALOG (Compact Disc fields) . Context Parents None Multiple No Children None Position After None Before CDTEXTFILE TITLE PERFORMER SONGWRITER FILE Example CATALOG 3203040601052 CCD sheet See CATALOG (Disc CCD Section) . Next: TITLE (CUE Command) , Previous: CATALOG (CUE Command) , Up: CUE sheet format [ Contents ][ Index ] C.2 CDTEXTFILE CUE Command: CDTEXTFILE file-name Specify file file-name as the one containing the CD-Text meta-data of the disc. If file-name contains any spaces it must be enclosed in quotation marks. The CD Text Encoding and Decoding Guide documents the CD-Text file format. Context Parents None Multiple No Children None Position After CATALOG Before TITLE PERFORMER SONGWRITER FILE Example CDTEXTFILE músicas-com-nomes-de-garotas.cdt CDTEXTFILE "EngHaw - Longe Demais das Capitais (1986).cdt" CCD sheet See CDText (CCD Section) . Next: PERFORMER (CUE Command) , Previous: CDTEXTFILE (CUE Command) , Up: CUE sheet format [ Contents ][ Index ] C.3 TITLE CUE Command: TITLE title-string If this command is inside a TRACK command context, make title-string the title of the correspondent track; otherwise make it the title of the entire disc. The value title-string should not contain more than 80 characters. If title-string contains any space, it must be enclosed in quotation marks. This command is meant for CD-Text enhanced discs. The same data can be retrieved from the CD-Text file using CDTEXTFILE command. Context Parents None TRACK Multiple No Children None Position After CATALOG CDTEXTFILE Before FILE Position ( TRACK ) After None Before INDEX Example TITLE "Por Quem os Sinos Dobram" TITLE S.O.S. CCD sheet The CCD sheet format support this feature only by means of a general mechanism designed to specify indiscriminately any CD-Text encoded entry. See CDText (CCD Section) . Next: SONGWRITER (CUE Command) , Previous: TITLE (CUE Command) , Up: CUE sheet format [ Contents ][ Index ] C.4 PERFORMER CUE Command: PERFORMER performer-string If this command is inside a TRACK command context, write performer-string as the name of the performer of the correspondent track; otherwise write it as the name of the performer of the entire disc. The value title-string should not contain more than 80 characters. If title-string contains any space, it must be enclosed in quotation marks. This command is meant for CD-Text enhanced discs. The same data can be retrieved from the CD-Text file using CDTEXTFILE command. Context Parents None TRACK Multiple No Children None Position After CATALOG CDTEXTFILE Before FILE Position ( TRACK ) After None Before INDEX Example PERFORMER "Detonator e as Musas do Metal" PERFORMER Metrô CCD sheet The CCD sheet format support this feature only by means of a general mechanism designed to specify indiscriminately any CD-Text encoded entry. See CDText (CCD Section) . Next: FILE (CUE Command) , Previous: PERFORMER (CUE Command) , Up: CUE sheet format [ Contents ][ Index ] C.5 SONGWRITER CUE Command: SONGWRITER song-writer-string If this command is inside a TRACK command context, write song-writer-string as the name of the song writer of the correspondent track; otherwise write it as the name of the song writer of the entire disc. The value song-writer-string should not contain more than 80 characters. If song-writer-string contains any space, it must be enclosed in quotation marks. This command is meant for CD-Text enhanced discs. The same data can be retrieved from the CD-Text file using CDTEXTFILE command. Context Parents None TRACK Multiple No Children None Position After CATALOG CDTEXTFILE Before FILE Position ( TRACK ) After None Before INDEX Example SONGWRITER "Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta" SONGWRITER Getz CCD sheet The CCD sheet format support this feature only by means of a general mechanism designed to specify indiscriminately any CD-Text encoded entry. See CDText (CCD Section) . Next: TRACK (CUE Command) , Previous: SONGWRITER (CUE Command) , Up: CUE sheet format [ Contents ][ Index ] C.6 FILE CUE Command: FILE file-name file-type Declare file file-name of type file-type as the one whose data will be used in the following TRACK command contexts by INDEX commands. If file-name contains any space, it must be enclosed in quotation marks. There are a total of 5 types file-type can take: two types for raw data and three for audio. The raw data types are BINARY and MOTOROLA , and they differ only in endianness — little and big endian respectively. The audio types are AIFF , WAVE and MP3 and the correspondent files must be setup to 44.1 KHz, 16 bits and stereo. The following table summarizes it: BINARY Intel binary raw data Little-endian — least significant byte first). MOTOROLA Motorola binary raw data Big-endian — most significant byte first). AIFF Audio data in AIFF (Audio Interchange File Format) . WAVE Audio data in WAVE (Waveform Audio File Format) . MP3 Audio data in MP3 (MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III) . Context Parents None Multiple Yes Children TRACK Position After CATALOG CDTEXTFILE Before None Example FILE guix-1.0.iso BINARY FILE "The Free Software Song.wav" WAVE CCD sheet Since the CCD sheet file is not meant to be composed from scratch by an user or authoring software, but rather created to mimic an existing disc layout, it is assumed that the source of data are the CCD image and sub-channel files, which have predefined formats and names. Thus there is no related explicit element in the CCD sheet format. Among the CCD set files, is presumed that the source of audio/data is a file with the same base name of the CCD sheet file, but with a different extension, to indicate its specific purpose, namely .img . This file is always assumed as having type BINARY . Next: FLAGS (CUE Command) , Previous: FILE (CUE Command) , Up: CUE sheet format [ Contents ][ Index ] C.7 TRACK CUE Command: TRACK number data-type Define the number th track, whose type is data-type . The value number is a strictly positive integer and must be one greater than the last one supplied to a previous TRACK command, notwithstanding number can be greater than 1 in the first occurrence of TRACK command; however, it cannot exceed 99 in any case. Usually number is padded with a 0 on the left when smaller than 10 , in order to keep track numbers two digit wide uniformly throughout the CUE sheet. The data-type argument is one of those described at MODE (Compact Disc fields) . This command should appear at least once in the CUE sheet file. Context Parents FILE Multiple Yes Children FLAGS ISRC TITLE PERFORMER SONGWRITER PREGAP INDEX POSTGAP Position After None Before None Example TRACK 1 MODE2/2352 TRACK 37 AUDIO CCD sheet See TRACK (CCD Section) . Next: ISRC (CUE Command) , Previous: TRACK (CUE Command) , Up: CUE sheet format [ Contents ][ Index ] C.8 FLAGS CUE Command: FLAGS flag_1 flag_2 … flag_n Set special sub-code flags flag_1 … flag_n for the current track. Flags are separated by space. For the allowed flags and its respective meanings, see FLAGS (Compact Disc fields) . Context Parents TRACK Multiple No Children None Position After None Before INDEX Example FLAGS DCP FLAGS 4CH PRE CCD sheet See FLAGS (TRACK CCD Section) . Next: PREGAP (CUE Command) , Previous: FLAGS (CUE Command) , Up: CUE sheet format [ Contents ][ Index ] C.9 ISRC CUE Command: ISRC code Specify the ISRC (International Standard Recording Code) to the current track. The value code is described at ISRC (Compact Disc fields) . This command only apply to audio tracks. Context Parents TRACK Multiple No Children None Position After None Before INDEX Example ISRC DKKH50800101 CCD sheet See ISRC (TRACK CCD Section) . Next: INDEX (CUE Command) , Previous: ISRC (CUE Command) , Up: CUE sheet format [ Contents ][ Index ] C.10 PREGAP CUE Command: PREGAP mm:ss:ff Set the length of the current track pre-gap to mm minutes plus ss seconds plus ff frames. The values mm , ss and ff must be non-negative integers. A frame is the 75th part of a second. No data is consumed from the file specified in the current FILE command context. Context Parents TRACK Multiple No Children None Position After None Before INDEX Example PREGAP 00:02:00 CCD sheet No CCD sheet element analogous or directly related to this command is known. Next: POSTGAP (CUE Command) , Previous: PREGAP (CUE Command) , Up: CUE sheet format [ Contents ][ Index ] C.11 INDEX CUE Command: INDEX number mm:ss:ff If number is 0 , then consider the time specified by the next INDEX command as the track pre-gap length present in the file declared by the current FILE command context. If number is 1 , then define the starting time of the index of this track as mm minutes plus ss seconds plus ff frames. This index specify the starting time of track data and is the only stored in the table-of-contents of the disc. If number is 2 or more, then define the starting time of the ( number -1) th sub-index within this track as mm minutes plus ss seconds plus ff frames. If this is the first INDEX command of the current TRACK command context, then it must start at 00:00:00 and number must be either 0 or 1 . If this is not the first INDEX command of the current TRACK command context, then number must be one greater than that of the last TRACK command. The value number cannot be greater than 99 and is usually padded with a 0 on the left when smaller than 10 , in order to keep index and sub-index numbers two digit wide uniformly throughout the CUE sheet. The time mm:ss:ff is an offset relative to the beginning of the file specified by the current FILE command context. The values mm , ss and ff must be non-negative integers. There are 75 frames per second. Context Parents TRACK Multiple Yes Children None Position After FLAGS ISRC TITLE PERFORMER SONGWRITER PREGAP Before POSTGAP Example INDEX 00 00:00:00 INDEX 01 00:02:00 INDEX 02 03:23:54 CCD sheet See INDEX (TRACK CCD Section) . Next: REM (CUE Command) , Previous: INDEX (CUE Command) , Up: CUE sheet format [ Contents ][ Index ] C.12 POSTGAP CUE Command: POSTGAP mm:ss:ff Set the length of the current track post-gap to mm minutes plus ss seconds plus ff frames. The values mm , ss and ff must be non-negative integers. A frame is the 75th part of a second. No data is consumed from the file specified in the current FILE command context. Context Parents TRACK Multiple No Children None Position After INDEX Before None Example POSTGAP 00:02:00 CCD sheet No CCD sheet element analogous or directly related to this command is known. Previous: POSTGAP (CUE Command) , Up: CUE sheet format [ Contents ][ Index ] C.13 REM CUE Command: REM comment Ignore comment . The value comment can be any string of arbitrary length, but it ends at end-of-line. Its practical use is to comment the CUE sheet for the sake of human readers. There is no way to make multi-line comments, but one can simply start consecutive lines with this command. Context Parents None Multiple Yes Children None Position After None Before None Example REM There is no system but GNU REM and Linux-Libre is just one of its kernels. CCD sheet No CCD sheet element analogous or directly related to this command is known. Next: The GNU Manifesto , Previous: CUE sheet format , Up: Top [ Contents ][ Index ] Appendix D GNU Free Documentation License Version 1.3, 3 November 2008 FSF (Free Software Foundation) ( http://fsf.org/ ) 51 Franklin St., Floor 5 Boston, MA 02110-1335 USA This document is part of GNU philosophy, the GNU Project's exhaustive collection of articles and essays about free software and related matters. Copyright © 2000, 2001, 2002, 2007, 2008 Free Software Foundation, Inc. Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire appendix are permitted worldwide, without royalty, in any medium, provided this notice is preserved. 0. PREAMBLE The purpose of this License is to make a manual, textbook, or other functional and useful document free in the sense of freedom: to assure everyone the effective freedom to copy and redistribute it, with or without modifying it, either commercially or noncommercially. Secondarily, this License preserves for the author and publisher a way to get credit for their work, while not being considered responsible for modifications made by others. This License is a kind of “copyleft”, which means that derivative works of the document must themselves be free in the same sense. It complements the GNU General Public License, which is a copyleft license designed for free software. We have designed this License in order to use it for manuals for free software, because free software needs free documentation: a free program should come with manuals providing the same freedoms that the software does. But this License is not limited to software manuals; it can be used for any textual work, regardless of subject matter or whether it is published as a printed book. We recommend this License principally for works whose purpose is instruction or reference. 1. 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TRANSLATION Translation is considered a kind of modification, so you may distribute translations of the Document under the terms of section 4. Replacing Invariant Sections with translations requires special permission from their copyright holders, but you may include translations of some or all Invariant Sections in addition to the original versions of these Invariant Sections. You may include a translation of this License, and all the license notices in the Document, and any Warranty Disclaimers, provided that you also include the original English version of this License and the original versions of those notices and disclaimers. In case of a disagreement between the translation and the original version of this License or a notice or disclaimer, the original version will prevail. If a section in the Document is Entitled “Acknowledgements”, “Dedications”, or “History”, the requirement (section 4) to Preserve its Title (section 1) will typically require changing the actual title. 9. 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The operator of an MMC Site may republish an MMC contained in the site under CC-BY-SA on the same site at any time before August 1, 2009, provided the MMC is eligible for relicensing. ADDENDUM: How to use this License for your documents To use this License in a document you have written, include a copy of the License in the document and put the following copyright and license notices just after the title page: Copyright (C) year your name . Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled ``GNU Free Documentation License''. If you have Invariant Sections, Front-Cover Texts and Back-Cover Texts, replace the “with…Texts.” line with this: with the Invariant Sections being list their titles , with the Front-Cover Texts being list , and with the Back-Cover Texts being list . If you have Invariant Sections without Cover Texts, or some other combination of the three, merge those two alternatives to suit the situation. If your document contains nontrivial examples of program code, we recommend releasing these examples in parallel under your choice of free software license, such as the GNU General Public License, to permit their use in free software. Next: The GNU Project , Previous: GNU Free Documentation License , Up: Top [ Contents ][ Index ] Appendix E The GNU Manifesto The GNU Manifesto was written by Richard Stallman at the beginning of the GNU Project, to ask for participation and support. For the first few years, it was updated in minor ways to account for developments, but now it seems best to leave it unchanged as most people have seen it. Since that time, we have learned about certain common misunderstandings that different wording could help avoid. Footnotes added since 1993 help clarify these points. For up-to-date information about the available GNU software, please see the information available on our web server, in particular our list of software. For how to contribute, see http://gnu.org/help . “The GNU Manifesto” was originally published in Dr. Dobb's Journal, vol. 10, n. 3 (March 1985). This document is part of GNU philosophy, the GNU Project's exhaustive collection of articles and essays about free software and related matters. Copyright © 1985, 1993, 2003, 2005, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 Free Software Foundation, Inc. Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire appendix are permitted worldwide, without royalty, in any medium, provided this notice is preserved. What's GNU? Gnu's Not Unix! GNU, which stands for Gnu's Not Unix, is the name for the complete Unix-compatible software system which I am writing so that I can give it away free to everyone who can use it. 41 Several other volunteers are helping me. Contributions of time, money, programs and equipment are greatly needed. So far we have an Emacs text editor with Lisp for writing editor commands, a source level debugger, a yacc-compatible parser generator, a linker, and around 35 utilities. A shell (command interpreter) is nearly completed. A new portable optimizing C compiler has compiled itself and may be released this year. An initial kernel exists but many more features are needed to emulate Unix. When the kernel and compiler are finished, it will be possible to distribute a GNU system suitable for program development. We will use TeX as our text formatter, but an nroff is being worked on. We will use the free, portable X window system as well. After this we will add a portable Common Lisp, an Empire game, a spreadsheet, and hundreds of other things, plus online documentation. We hope to supply, eventually, everything useful that normally comes with a Unix system, and more. GNU will be able to run Unix programs, but will not be identical to Unix. We will make all improvements that are convenient, based on our experience with other operating systems. In particular, we plan to have longer file names, file version numbers, a crashproof file system, file name completion perhaps, terminal-independent display support, and perhaps eventually a Lisp-based window system through which several Lisp programs and ordinary Unix programs can share a screen. Both C and Lisp will be available as system programming languages. We will try to support UUCP, MIT Chaosnet, and Internet protocols for communication. GNU is aimed initially at machines in the 68000/16000 class with virtual memory, because they are the easiest machines to make it run on. The extra effort to make it run on smaller machines will be left to someone who wants to use it on them. To avoid horrible confusion, please pronounce the g in the word “GNU” when it is the name of this project. Why I Must Write GNU I consider that the Golden Rule requires that if I like a program I must share it with other people who like it. Software sellers want to divide the users and conquer them, making each user agree not to share with others. I refuse to break solidarity with other users in this way. I cannot in good conscience sign a nondisclosure agreement or a software license agreement. For years I worked within the Artificial Intelligence Lab to resist such tendencies and other inhospitalities, but eventually they had gone too far: I could not remain in an institution where such things are done for me against my will. So that I can continue to use computers without dishonor, I have decided to put together a sufficient body of free software so that I will be able to get along without any software that is not free. I have resigned from the AI Lab to deny MIT any legal excuse to prevent me from giving GNU away. 42 Why GNU Will Be Compatible with Unix Unix is not my ideal system, but it is not too bad. The essential features of Unix seem to be good ones, and I think I can fill in what Unix lacks without spoiling them. And a system compatible with Unix would be convenient for many other people to adopt. How GNU Will Be Available GNU is not in the public domain. Everyone will be permitted to modify and redistribute GNU, but no distributor will be allowed to restrict its further redistribution. That is to say, proprietary modifications will not be allowed. I want to make sure that all versions of GNU remain free. Why Many Other Programmers Want to Help I have found many other programmers who are excited about GNU and want to help. Many programmers are unhappy about the commercialization of system software. It may enable them to make more money, but it requires them to feel in conflict with other programmers in general rather than feel as comrades. The fundamental act of friendship among programmers is the sharing of programs; marketing arrangements now typically used essentially forbid programmers to treat others as friends. The purchaser of software must choose between friendship and obeying the law. Naturally, many decide that friendship is more important. But those who believe in law often do not feel at ease with either choice. They become cynical and think that programming is just a way of making money. By working on and using GNU rather than proprietary programs, we can be hospitable to everyone and obey the law. In addition, GNU serves as an example to inspire and a banner to rally others to join us in sharing. This can give us a feeling of harmony which is impossible if we use software that is not free. For about half the programmers I talk to, this is an important happiness that money cannot replace. How You Can Contribute I am asking computer manufacturers for donations of machines and money. I'm asking individuals for donations of programs and work. 43 One consequence you can expect if you donate machines is that GNU will run on them at an early date. The machines should be complete, ready to use systems, approved for use in a residential area, and not in need of sophisticated cooling or power. I have found very many programmers eager to contribute part-time work for GNU. For most projects, such part-time distributed work would be very hard to coordinate; the independently written parts would not work together. But for the particular task of replacing Unix, this problem is absent. A complete Unix system contains hundreds of utility programs, each of which is documented separately. Most interface specifications are fixed by Unix compatibility. If each contributor can write a compatible replacement for a single Unix utility, and make it work properly in place of the original on a Unix system, then these utilities will work right when put together. Even allowing for Murphy to create a few unexpected problems, assembling these components will be a feasible task. (The kernel will require closer communication and will be worked on by a small, tight group.) If I get donations of money, I may be able to hire a few people full or part time. The salary won't be high by programmers' standards, but I'm looking for people for whom building community spirit is as important as making money. I view this as a way of enabling dedicated people to devote their full energies to working on GNU by sparing them the need to make a living in another way. Why All Computer Users Will Benefit Once GNU is written, everyone will be able to obtain good system software free, just like air. 44 This means much more than just saving everyone the price of a Unix license. It means that much wasteful duplication of system programming effort will be avoided. This effort can go instead into advancing the state of the art. Complete system sources will be available to everyone. As a result, a user who needs changes in the system will always be free to make them himself, or hire any available programmer or company to make them for him. Users will no longer be at the mercy of one programmer or company which owns the sources and is in sole position to make changes. Schools will be able to provide a much more educational environment by encouraging all students to study and improve the system code. Harvard's computer lab used to have the policy that no program could be installed on the system if its sources were not on public display, and upheld it by actually refusing to install certain programs. I was very much inspired by this. Finally, the overhead of considering who owns the system software and what one is or is not entitled to do with it will be lifted. Arrangements to make people pay for using a program, including licensing of copies, always incur a tremendous cost to society through the cumbersome mechanisms necessary to figure out how much (that is, which programs) a person must pay for. And only a police state can force everyone to obey them. Consider a space station where air must be manufactured at great cost: charging each breather per liter of air may be fair, but wearing the metered gas mask all day and all night is intolerable even if everyone can afford to pay the air bill. And the TV cameras everywhere to see if you ever take the mask off are outrageous. It's better to support the air plant with a head tax and chuck the masks. Copying all or parts of a program is as natural to a programmer as breathing, and as productive. It ought to be as free. Some Easily Rebutted Objections to GNU's Goals “Nobody will use it if it is free, because that means they can't rely on any support.” “You have to charge for the program to pay for providing the support.” If people would rather pay for GNU plus service than get GNU free without service, a company to provide just service to people who have obtained GNU free ought to be profitable. 45 We must distinguish between support in the form of real programming work and mere handholding. The former is something one cannot rely on from a software vendor. If your problem is not shared by enough people, the vendor will tell you to get lost. If your business needs to be able to rely on support, the only way is to have all the necessary sources and tools. Then you can hire any available person to fix your problem; you are not at the mercy of any individual. With Unix, the price of sources puts this out of consideration for most businesses. With GNU this will be easy. It is still possible for there to be no available competent person, but this problem cannot be blamed on distribution arrangements. GNU does not eliminate all the world's problems, only some of them. Meanwhile, the users who know nothing about computers need handholding: doing things for them which they could easily do themselves but don't know how. Such services could be provided by companies that sell just handholding and repair service. If it is true that users would rather spend money and get a product with service, they will also be willing to buy the service having got the product free. The service companies will compete in quality and price; users will not be tied to any particular one. Meanwhile, those of us who don't need the service should be able to use the program without paying for the service. “You cannot reach many people without advertising, and you must charge for the program to support that.” “It's no use advertising a program people can get free.” There are various forms of free or very cheap publicity that can be used to inform numbers of computer users about something like GNU. But it may be true that one can reach more microcomputer users with advertising. If this is really so, a business which advertises the service of copying and mailing GNU for a fee ought to be successful enough to pay for its advertising and more. This way, only the users who benefit from the advertising pay for it. On the other hand, if many people get GNU from their friends, and such companies don't succeed, this will show that advertising was not really necessary to spread GNU. Why is it that free market advocates don't want to let the free market decide this? 46 “My company needs a proprietary operating system to get a competitive edge.” GNU will remove operating system software from the realm of competition. You will not be able to get an edge in this area, but neither will your competitors be able to get an edge over you. You and they will compete in other areas, while benefiting mutually in this one. If your business is selling an operating system, you will not like GNU, but that's tough on you. If your business is something else, GNU can save you from being pushed into the expensive business of selling operating systems. I would like to see GNU development supported by gifts from many manufacturers and users, reducing the cost to each. 47 “Don't programmers deserve a reward for their creativity?” If anything deserves a reward, it is social contribution. Creativity can be a social contribution, but only in so far as society is free to use the results. If programmers deserve to be rewarded for creating innovative programs, by the same token they deserve to be punished if they restrict the use of these programs. “Shouldn't a programmer be able to ask for a reward for his creativity?” There is nothing wrong with wanting pay for work, or seeking to maximize one's income, as long as one does not use means that are destructive. But the means customary in the field of software today are based on destruction. Extracting money from users of a program by restricting their use of it is destructive because the restrictions reduce the amount and the ways that the program can be used. This reduces the amount of wealth that humanity derives from the program. When there is a deliberate choice to restrict, the harmful consequences are deliberate destruction. The reason a good citizen does not use such destructive means to become wealthier is that, if everyone did so, we would all become poorer from the mutual destructiveness. This is Kantian ethics; or, the Golden Rule. Since I do not like the consequences that result if everyone hoards information, I am required to consider it wrong for one to do so. Specifically, the desire to be rewarded for one's creativity does not justify depriving the world in general of all or part of that creativity. “Won't programmers starve?” I could answer that nobody is forced to be a programmer. Most of us cannot manage to get any money for standing on the street and making faces. But we are not, as a result, condemned to spend our lives standing on the street making faces, and starving. We do something else. But that is the wrong answer because it accepts the questioner's implicit assumption: that without ownership of software, programmers cannot possibly be paid a cent. Supposedly it is all or nothing. The real reason programmers will not starve is that it will still be possible for them to get paid for programming; just not paid as much as now. Restricting copying is not the only basis for business in software. It is the most common basis 48 because it brings in the most money. If it were prohibited, or rejected by the customer, software business would move to other bases of organization which are now used less often. There are always numerous ways to organize any kind of business. Probably programming will not be as lucrative on the new basis as it is now. But that is not an argument against the change. It is not considered an injustice that sales clerks make the salaries that they now do. If programmers made the same, that would not be an injustice either. (In practice they would still make considerably more than that.) “Don't people have a right to control how their creativity is used?” “Control over the use of one's ideas” really constitutes control over other people's lives; and it is usually used to make their lives more difficult. People who have studied the issue of intellectual property rights 49 carefully (such as lawyers) say that there is no intrinsic right to intellectual property. The kinds of supposed intellectual property rights that the government recognizes were created by specific acts of legislation for specific purposes. For example, the patent system was established to encourage inventors to disclose the details of their inventions. Its purpose was to help society rather than to help inventors. At the time, the life span of 17 years for a patent was short compared with the rate of advance of the state of the art. Since patents are an issue only among manufacturers, for whom the cost and effort of a license agreement are small compared with setting up production, the patents often do not do much harm. They do not obstruct most individuals who use patented products. The idea of copyright did not exist in ancient times, when authors frequently copied other authors at length in works of nonfiction. This practice was useful, and is the only way many authors' works have survived even in part. The copyright system was created expressly for the purpose of encouraging authorship. In the domain for which it was invented—books, which could be copied economically only on a printing press—it did little harm, and did not obstruct most of the individuals who read the books. All intellectual property rights are just licenses granted by society because it was thought, rightly or wrongly, that society as a whole would benefit by granting them. But in any particular situation, we have to ask: are we really better off granting such license? What kind of act are we licensing a person to do? The case of programs today is very different from that of books a hundred years ago. The fact that the easiest way to copy a program is from one neighbor to another, the fact that a program has both source code and object code which are distinct, and the fact that a program is used rather than read and enjoyed, combine to create a situation in which a person who enforces a copyright is harming society as a whole both materially and spiritually; in which a person should not do so regardless of whether the law enables him to. “Competition makes things get done better.” The paradigm of competition is a race: by rewarding the winner, we encourage everyone to run faster. When capitalism really works this way, it does a good job; but its defenders are wrong in assuming it always works this way. If the runners forget why the reward is offered and become intent on winning, no matter how, they may find other strategies—such as, attacking other runners. If the runners get into a fist fight, they will all finish late. Proprietary and secret software is the moral equivalent of runners in a fist fight. Sad to say, the only referee we've got does not seem to object to fights; he just regulates them (“For every ten yards you run, you can fire one shot”). He really ought to break them up, and penalize runners for even trying to fight. “Won't everyone stop programming without a monetary incentive?” Actually, many people will program with absolutely no monetary incentive. Programming has an irresistible fascination for some people, usually the people who are best at it. There is no shortage of professional musicians who keep at it even though they have no hope of making a living that way. But really this question, though commonly asked, is not appropriate to the situation. Pay for programmers will not disappear, only become less. So the right question is, will anyone program with a reduced monetary incentive? My experience shows that they will. For more than ten years, many of the world's best programmers worked at the Artificial Intelligence Lab for far less money than they could have had anywhere else. They got many kinds of nonmonetary rewards: fame and appreciation, for example. And creativity is also fun, a reward in itself. Then most of them left when offered a chance to do the same interesting work for a lot of money. What the facts show is that people will program for reasons other than riches; but if given a chance to make a lot of money as well, they will come to expect and demand it. Low-paying organizations do poorly in competition with high-paying ones, but they do not have to do badly if the high-paying ones are banned. “We need the programmers desperately. If they demand that we stop helping our neighbors, we have to obey.” You're never so desperate that you have to obey this sort of demand. Remember: millions for defense, but not a cent for tribute! “Programmers need to make a living somehow.” In the short run, this is true. However, there are plenty of ways that programmers could make a living without selling the right to use a program. This way is customary now because it brings programmers and businessmen the most money, not because it is the only way to make a living. It is easy to find other ways if you want to find them. Here are a number of examples. A manufacturer introducing a new computer will pay for the porting of operating systems onto the new hardware. The sale of teaching, handholding and maintenance services could also employ programmers. People with new ideas could distribute programs as freeware, 50 asking for donations from satisfied users, or selling handholding services. I have met people who are already working this way successfully. Users with related needs can form users' groups, and pay dues. A group would contract with programming companies to write programs that the group's members would like to use. All sorts of development can be funded with a Software Tax: Suppose everyone who buys a computer has to pay x percent of the price as a software tax. The government gives this to an agency like the NSF to spend on software development. But if the computer buyer makes a donation to software development himself, he can take a credit against the tax. He can donate to the project of his own choosing—often, chosen because he hopes to use the results when it is done. He can take a credit for any amount of donation up to the total tax he had to pay. The total tax rate could be decided by a vote of the payers of the tax, weighted according to the amount they will be taxed on. The consequences: The computer-using community supports software development. This community decides what level of support is needed. Users who care which projects their share is spent on can choose this for themselves. In the long run, making programs free is a step toward the postscarcity world, where nobody will have to work very hard just to make a living. People will be free to devote themselves to activities that are fun, such as programming, after spending the necessary ten hours a week on required tasks such as legislation, family counseling, robot repair and asteroid prospecting. There will be no need to be able to make a living from programming. We have already greatly reduced the amount of work that the whole society must do for its actual productivity, but only a little of this has translated itself into leisure for workers because much nonproductive activity is required to accompany productive activity. The main causes of this are bureaucracy and isometric struggles against competition. Free software will greatly reduce these drains in the area of software production. We must do this, in order for technical gains in productivity to translate into less work for us. Next: Linux and the GNU system , Previous: The GNU Manifesto , Up: Top [ Contents ][ Index ] Appendix F The GNU Project The original version of this essay was published in Open Sources: Voices from the Open Source Revolution, by Chris DiBona and others (Sebastopol: O'Reilly Media, 1999), under the title “The GNU Operating System and the Free Software Movement.” This document is part of GNU philosophy, the GNU Project's exhaustive collection of articles and essays about free software and related matters. Copyright © 1998, 2001, 2002, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2010 Richard Stallman Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire appendix are permitted worldwide, without royalty, in any medium, provided this notice is preserved. The First Software-Sharing Community When I started working at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab in 1971, I became part of a software-sharing community that had existed for many years. Sharing of software was not limited to our particular community; it is as old as computers, just as sharing of recipes is as old as cooking. But we did it more than most. The AI Lab used a timesharing operating system called ITS (the Incompatible Timesharing System) that the lab's staff hackers 51 had designed and written in assembler language for the Digital PDP-10, one of the large computers of the era. As a member of this community, an AI Lab staff system hacker, my job was to improve this system. We did not call our software “free software,” because that term did not yet exist; but that is what it was. Whenever people from another university or a company wanted to port and use a program, we gladly let them. If you saw someone using an unfamiliar and interesting program, you could always ask to see the source code, so that you could read it, change it, or cannibalize parts of it to make a new program. The Collapse of the Community The situation changed drastically in the early 1980s when Digital discontinued the PDP-10 series. Its architecture, elegant and powerful in the 60s, could not extend naturally to the larger address spaces that were becoming feasible in the 80s. This meant that nearly all of the programs composing ITS were obsolete. The AI Lab hacker community had already collapsed, not long before. In 1981, the spin-off company Symbolics had hired away nearly all of the hackers from the AI Lab, and the depopulated community was unable to maintain itself. (The book Hackers, by Steve Levy, describes these events, as well as giving a clear picture of this community in its prime.) When the AI Lab bought a new PDP-10 in 1982, its administrators decided to use Digital's nonfree timesharing system instead of ITS. The modern computers of the era, such as the VAX or the 68020, had their own operating systems, but none of them were free software: you had to sign a nondisclosure agreement even to get an executable copy. This meant that the first step in using a computer was to promise not to help your neighbor. A cooperating community was forbidden. The rule made by the owners of proprietary software was, “If you share with your neighbor, you are a pirate. If you want any changes, beg us to make them.” The idea that the proprietary software social system—the system that says you are not allowed to share or change software—is antisocial, that it is unethical, that it is simply wrong, may come as a surprise to some readers. But what else could we say about a system based on dividing the public and keeping users helpless? Readers who find the idea surprising may have taken the proprietary software social system as a given, or judged it on the terms suggested by proprietary software businesses. Software publishers have worked long and hard to convince people that there is only one way to look at the issue. When software publishers talk about “enforcing” their “rights” or “stopping piracy,” what they actually say is secondary. The real message of these statements is in the unstated assumptions they take for granted, which the public is asked to accept without examination. Let's therefore examine them. One assumption is that software companies have an unquestionable natural right to own software and thus have power over all its users. (If this were a natural right, then no matter how much harm it does to the public, we could not object.) Interestingly, the US Constitution and legal tradition reject this view; copyright is not a natural right, but an artificial government-imposed monopoly that limits the users' natural right to copy. Another unstated assumption is that the only important thing about software is what jobs it allows you to do—that we computer users should not care what kind of society we are allowed to have. A third assumption is that we would have no usable software (or would never have a program to do this or that particular job) if we did not offer a company power over the users of the program. This assumption may have seemed plausible, before the free software movement demonstrated that we can make plenty of useful software without putting chains on it. If we decline to accept these assumptions, and judge these issues based on ordinary commonsense morality while placing the users first, we arrive at very different conclusions. Computer users should be free to modify programs to fit their needs, and free to share software, because helping other people is the basis of society. There is no room here for an extensive statement of the reasoning behind this conclusion, so I refer the reader to the article Why Software Should Not Have Owners . A Stark Moral Choice With my community gone, to continue as before was impossible. Instead, I faced a stark moral choice. The easy choice was to join the proprietary software world, signing nondisclosure agreements and promising not to help my fellow hacker. Most likely I would also be developing software that was released under nondisclosure agreements, thus adding to the pressure on other people to betray their fellows too. I could have made money this way, and perhaps amused myself writing code. But I knew that at the end of my career, I would look back on years of building walls to divide people, and feel I had spent my life making the world a worse place. I had already experienced being on the receiving end of a nondisclosure agreement, when someone refused to give me and the MIT AI Lab the source code for the control program for our printer. (The lack of certain features in this program made use of the printer extremely frustrating.) So I could not tell myself that nondisclosure agreements were innocent. I was very angry when he refused to share with us; I could not turn around and do the same thing to everyone else. Another choice, straightforward but unpleasant, was to leave the computer field. That way my skills would not be misused, but they would still be wasted. I would not be culpable for dividing and restricting computer users, but it would happen nonetheless. So I looked for a way that a programmer could do something for the good. I asked myself, was there a program or programs that I could write, so as to make a community possible once again? The answer was clear: what was needed first was an operating system. That is the crucial software for starting to use a computer. With an operating system, you can do many things; without one, you cannot run the computer at all. With a free operating system, we could again have a community of cooperating hackers—and invite anyone to join. And anyone would be able to use a computer without starting out by conspiring to deprive his or her friends. As an operating system developer, I had the right skills for this job. So even though I could not take success for granted, I realized that I was elected to do the job. I chose to make the system compatible with Unix so that it would be portable, and so that Unix users could easily switch to it. The name GNU was chosen, following a hacker tradition, as a recursive acronym for “GNU's Not Unix.” An operating system does not mean just a kernel, barely enough to run other programs. In the 1970s, every operating system worthy of the name included command processors, assemblers, compilers, interpreters, debuggers, text editors, mailers, and much more. ITS had them, Multics had them, VMS had them, and Unix had them. The GNU operating system would include them too. Later I heard these words, attributed to Hillel: 52 If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I? If not now, when? The decision to start the GNU Project was based on a similar spirit. Free as in Freedom The term “free software” is sometimes misunderstood—it has nothing to do with price. It is about freedom. Here, therefore, is the definition of free software. A program is free software, for you, a particular user, if: You have the freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose. You have the freedom to modify the program to suit your needs. (To make this freedom effective in practice, you must have access to the source code, since making changes in a program without having the source code is exceedingly difficult.) You have the freedom to redistribute copies, either gratis or for a fee. You have the freedom to distribute modified versions of the program, so that the community can benefit from your improvements. Since “free” refers to freedom, not to price, there is no contradiction between selling copies and free software. In fact, the freedom to sell copies is crucial: collections of free software sold on CD-ROMs are important for the community, and selling them is an important way to raise funds for free software development. Therefore, a program which people are not free to include on these collections is not free software. Because of the ambiguity of “free,” people have long looked for alternatives, but no one has found a better term. The English language has more words and nuances than any other, but it lacks a simple, unambiguous, word that means “free,” as in freedom—“unfettered” being the word that comes closest in meaning. Such alternatives as “liberated,” “freedom,” and “open” have either the wrong meaning or some other disadvantage. GNU Software and the GNU System Developing a whole system is a very large project. To bring it into reach, I decided to adapt and use existing pieces of free software wherever that was possible. For example, I decided at the very beginning to use TeX as the principal text formatter; a few years later, I decided to use the X Window System rather than writing another window system for GNU. Because of this decision, the GNU system is not the same as the collection of all GNU software. The GNU system includes programs that are not GNU software, programs that were developed by other people and projects for their own purposes, but which we can use because they are free software. Commencing the Project In January 1984 I quit my job at MIT and began writing GNU software. Leaving MIT was necessary so that MIT would not be able to interfere with distributing GNU as free software. If I had remained on the staff, MIT could have claimed to own the work, and could have imposed their own distribution terms, or even turned the work into a proprietary software package. I had no intention of doing a large amount of work only to see it become useless for its intended purpose: creating a new software-sharing community. However, Professor Winston, then the head of the MIT AI Lab, kindly invited me to keep using the lab's facilities. The First Steps Shortly before beginning the GNU Project, I heard about the Free University Compiler Kit, also known as VUCK. (The Dutch word for “free” is written with a v. ) This was a compiler designed to handle multiple languages, including C and Pascal, and to support multiple target machines. I wrote to its author asking if GNU could use it. He responded derisively, stating that the university was free but the compiler was not. I therefore decided that my first program for the GNU Project would be a multilanguage, multiplatform compiler. Hoping to avoid the need to write the whole compiler myself, I obtained the source code for the Pastel compiler, which was a multiplatform compiler developed at Lawrence Livermore Lab. It supported, and was written in, an extended version of Pascal, designed to be a system-programming language. I added a C front end, and began porting it to the Motorola 68000 computer. But I had to give that up when I discovered that the compiler needed many megabytes of stack space, while the available 68000 Unix system would only allow 64k. I then realized that the Pastel compiler functioned by parsing the entire input file into a syntax tree, converting the whole syntax tree into a chain of “instructions,” and then generating the whole output file, without ever freeing any storage. At this point, I concluded I would have to write a new compiler from scratch. That new compiler is now known as GCC; none of the Pastel compiler is used in it, but I managed to adapt and use the C front end that I had written. But that was some years later; first, I worked on GNU Emacs. GNU Emacs I began work on GNU Emacs in September 1984, and in early 1985 it was beginning to be usable. This enabled me to begin using Unix systems to do editing; having no interest in learning to use vi or ed, I had done my editing on other kinds of machines until then. At this point, people began wanting to use GNU Emacs, which raised the question of how to distribute it. Of course, I put it on the anonymous ftp server on the MIT computer that I used. (This computer, prep.ai.mit.edu , thus became the principal GNU ftp distribution site; when it was decommissioned a few years later, we transferred the name to our new ftp server.) But at that time, many of the interested people were not on the Internet and could not get a copy by ftp. So the question was, what would I say to them? I could have said, “Find a friend who is on the net and who will make a copy for you.” Or I could have done what I did with the original PDP-10 Emacs: tell them, “Mail me a tape and a SASE (self-addressed stamped envelope), and I will mail it back with Emacs on it.” But I had no job, and I was looking for ways to make money from free software. So I announced that I would mail a tape to whoever wanted one, for a fee of $150. In this way, I started a free software distribution business, the precursor of the companies that today distribute entire Linux-based GNU systems. Is a Program Free for Every User? If a program is free software when it leaves the hands of its author, this does not necessarily mean it will be free software for everyone who has a copy of it. For example, public domain software (software that is not copyrighted) is free software; but anyone can make a
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