The libcdio package contains a library which encapsulates CD-ROM
reading and control. Applications wishing to be oblivious of the OS-
and device-dependent properties of a CD-ROM can use this library.

Also included is a library for working with ISO-9660 filesystems.

Some support for disk image types like BIN/CUE and NRG is available,
so applications that use this library also have the ability to read
disc images as though they were CD's.

Immediate of the library in this package are the Video CD authoring
and ripping tools VCDImager (http://vcdimager.org), a
navigation-capable Video CD plugin and CD-DA plugins for the media
players xine (http://xinehq.de) and videolan's vlc
(http://videolan.org).

Also included in the libcdio package is a utility program cd-info which
displays CD information: number of tracks, CD-format and if possible
basic information about the format.  If libcddb
(http://libcdddb.sourceforge.net) is available, the cd-info program
will display CDDB matches on CD-DA discs. And if a new enough version
of libvcdinfo is available (from the vcdimager project), then cd-info
shows basic VCD information. 

Other utility programs in the libcdio package are cd-read, for
performing low-level block reading of a CD or CD image, iso-info for
displaying ISO-9660 information from an ISO-9660 image, and iso-read
for extracting files from an ISO-9660 image.

At present, there is no support for directing CD Audio control,
e.g. playing, stopping, or pausing of a CD-CA where the blocks are not
actually read into the computer. Nor is there any support for writing
CD's. Nor is there any support for reading or writing DVDs. For some
of these, there are other libraries (e.g. libdi, libscg, or libdvdread)
may be helpful.

I'm not theoretically opposed to putting support like this into
libcdio. However at present there are already many gaps in this
library so narrowing its scope in order to focus on these things I
think is a good idea.

$Id: README,v 1.5 2004/04/21 09:26:37 rocky Exp $