What Makes a Sound

Documentation / Contents - System and Desktop Sounds

• Overview of System and Desktop Sounds
  • What It Is Not
  • The Window
  • The Help Button
  • Two Faces
• The Controls
  • Master Volume Control
  • Mute System
  • Enable Selected Sounds
  • Play Desktop Sounds Through
  • What Is Not Here
• Sound Schemes
  • Where Schemes Live
  • The Description File
  • Audio Formats
  • Writing Your Own
• What Makes a Sound
  • The Six Categories
  • Alerts and Status
  • Desktop Actions
  • Bell
  • Tunes
  • Accessibility
• Applying, Resetting, and Closing
  • Apply
  • Close
  • Reset ...
  • Help
  • Keyboard
  • Command Line
• Settings and Files
  • The Configuration File
  • The Accessibility Category
  • Environment Variables
  • How the Panel Reaches the Daemon
• Desktop Sounds and the Audio Panel
  • Which One Do I Want

Other cards

• Copyright Information

What Makes a Sound

The desktop announces things by NAME, not by filename. A program says "this was an Error" or "this was a DropCopy", and the daemon looks up what the current scheme wants played for that name.

This page lists the names, so you know what a scheme can bind. You cannot bind them from this panel; a per-event editor is planned and not built. Edit the scheme's description file instead. See Sound Schemes.

The Six Categories

Every event belongs to one category, and the category is what the five checkboxes switch.

desktop    open, close, drop, trash, folders, desks
alerts     errors, warnings, questions
tunes      the login and logout tunes, and the clock chimes
bell       the terminal bell, the margin bell, the plain beep
keyclick   the click on each key press
access     the accessibility sounds; no checkbox on this panel

Alerts and Status

Error  FatalError  Warning  Question  Info
MinorError  MajorError  BadValue  InvalidLocation
Failure  CursorStuck  AppDeath  ComposeFail

Desktop Actions

Launch  Completion  LaunchApp  ImAlive
DropMove  DropCopy  DropReference  DropIgnore
Remove  RemoveToDumpster  PutAway  Mount  EmptyDumpster
OpenFolder  OpenRemoteFolder  PrintFiles  DeskSwitch
Start  End  Success  Wait  Proceed  Ignore
Iconify  Deiconify  Open  Close
NewMail
SearchBegin  SearchMiss  SearchHit  SearchEnd
TypeSelectMulti  TypeSelectOne  TypeSelectNone
SessionLock  SessionUnlock

The three TypeSelect events are the ones that normally allow overlap.

Bell

Beep  TerminalBell  MarginBell  RepeatingLastBell

Tunes

Login  Logout
ClockChimeHour  ClockChimeHalf  ClockChimeQuarter

Login and Logout are ours. IRIX kept those in the machine's firmware, which is why the Startup & Shutdown Tunes checkbox is greyed off SGI hardware.

Accessibility

Fifteen events, all beginning AX_, covering the feature and indicator switches, slow keys, bounce keys and sticky keys:

AX_FeatureOn  AX_FeatureOff  AX_FeatureChange
AX_IndicatorOn  AX_IndicatorOff  AX_IndicatorChange
AX_SlowKeysWarning  AX_SlowKeyPress  AX_SlowKeyAccept
AX_SlowKeyReject  AX_SlowKeyRelease
AX_BounceKeyReject
AX_StickyLatch  AX_StickyLock  AX_StickyUnlock

These have no checkbox on this panel. Their category is recorded in the configuration file. See Settings and Files.

A Scheme Need Not Bind Them All

A scheme binds the events it has sounds for. An event with no binding makes no sound. That is why a partial scheme is a legitimate thing to ship and why Moria exists.

Next

• Applying, Resetting, and Closing
• Settings and Files