Overview of System and Desktop Sounds

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

System & Desktop Sounds

This panel decides whether the desktop makes noises, which set of noises it uses, and how loud they are. The program is cysoundd-prefs. Its window is titled "System & Desktop Sounds".

Open it from the Toolchest: Desktop > Customize > Sounds.

What It Is Not

It is not the hardware mixer. It does not choose an output device, set the card's gain, or mute the machine. That is the Audio Panel; see Desktop Sounds and the Audio Panel.

The master volume here is applied in software, on top of whatever the hardware is doing, and it affects only the desktop's own sounds.

The Window

One narrow column, no menu bar, no tabs. Top to bottom:

a speaker picture and the title
Sound Scheme:                  which set of sounds; extended face only
Master Volume Control:         a slider, 0 to 100
Mute System                    a checkbox
Enable Selected Sounds:        five category checkboxes
Play Desktop Sounds Through:   the output
Apply  Close  Reset ...  Help
a one-line help message

The Message Line

The bottom line explains whatever the pointer is over. Roll onto the volume slider and it tells you what the volume does. It is also where every result appears, such as:

Settings saved and sent to the sound daemon.
Settings saved (no sound daemon is running yet).
Could not write ~/.cyanotype/cysoundd.conf.

The Help Button

The Help button on this panel does NOT open this book. It arms click-for-help mode: the button turns yellow, and rolling the pointer over a control shows a short explanation of that control. Click Help again to turn it off.

That is the SGI arrangement, and it is correct for a dialog. The book you are reading is the other half.

In This Book

• The Controls
• Sound Schemes
• What Makes a Sound
• Applying, Resetting, and Closing
• Settings and Files
• Desktop Sounds and the Audio Panel

Two Faces

cysoundd-prefs               the full panel, with the scheme chooser
cysoundd-prefs --canonical   the IRIX face, without the scheme chooser

The extended face is the default. The canonical face is the same panel minus the "Sound Scheme:" label and its menu, in the narrower original width.