[Rd] defining r audio connections

[irederik m@iii@g oii oib@@et]

Dear R Devel,

Since Linux moved away from using a file-system interface for audio, I think it is necessary to write special libraries to interface with audio hardware from various languages on Linux.

In R, it seems like the appropriate datatype for a `snd_pcm_t` handle pointing to an open ALSA source or sink would be a "connection". Connection types are already defined in R for "file", "url", "pipe", "fifo", "socketConnection", etc.

Is there a tutorial or an example package where a new type of connection is defined, so that I can see how to do this properly in a package?

I can see from the R source that, for example, `do_gzfile` is defined in `connections.c` and referenced in `names.c`. However, I thought I should ask here first in case there is a better place to start, than trying to copy this code.

I only want an object that I can use `readBin` and `writeBin` on, to read and write audio data using e.g. `snd_pcm_writei` which is part of the `alsa-lib` package.

Thank you very much,

Frederick