[LAD] ALSA doumentation

Hello all, Reading the file produced by 'alsactl store', I learn that my sound hardware has a number of control parameters that have names, types, values, ranges, etc. etc. I now want to write some hopefully not too convolved C or C++ code to read and write these parameters. Is there, after X years of ALSA, any documentation that explains the basic concepts and tells me how to do this ? If such a thing exists I can't find it. The Doxygen info on the ALSA site is completely useless for the purpose of learning to understand and use the control interface. The textual information provided there usually provides *nothing* that can't be read from the C types, structs or functions it is supposed to document. It just repeats the jargon used in the code, and is at least 99.9% redundant. What these things actually mean, how they fit together and what is the big picture is AFAIK nowhere and never explained. Which is strange, because if you design a system such as this, that would be the absolutely first thing you need to define. No doubt the designers have it in their heads. No doubt it's well structured and also abstracted to almost absurd levels. But it remains a complete mystery unless you have the time and energy and someone is paying you to spend at least half a year to reverse-engineer the so-called docs. If ever there was an example of Doxygen or similar system being no more than a pretext to keep the quality department happy, ALSA is the best one I know of. Now if someone can point me to some existing docs that explain how I can e.g. set the sample clock source on a RME MADI card in less than ten lines of C code (knowing the parameter names, ranges, etc - no need to find them out dynamically, I can read them asound.state) then I'll eat my hat. It shouldn't be difficult. On some competing systems all it takes is one ioctl(). Ciao, -- FA Laboratorio di Acustica ed Elettroacustica Parma, Italia Lascia la spina, cogli la rosa.