Sound Schemes

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

Sound Schemes

A sound scheme is a named set of sounds. Choosing one and pressing Apply tells the sound daemon to switch schemes live.

The menu on the extended face lists every scheme installed. Two ship:

Rivendell   the default set
Moria       a deliberately incomplete fixture, used for testing

Moria is there on purpose: it is a scheme with a description file and no audio, so that the daemon's behaviour when a sound is missing can be tested without breaking the real scheme.

Where Schemes Live

A scheme is a directory holding a description file of the same name plus its audio files.

<share>/cysound/<Name>/<Name>.cysound     the shipped schemes
~/.cyanotype/share/cysound/<Name>/        your own

Both directories are scanned and the results merged by name. A directory counts as a scheme only if it contains a description file named after itself.

The Description File

Line-oriented text in X resource syntax, with a version sentinel and a short header, then one group of lines per event.

!cysound-1
!name:    Rivendell
!author:  The Cyanotype Project
!license: BSD 2-Clause
!gain:    1.0

Cy*Open.soundfile:     mithril-chime.wav
Cy*Open.label:         Open
Cy*Open.category:      desktop
Cy*Open.gain:          0.8
Cy*Open.allowOverlap:  false

Five attributes per event and no more:

soundfile      the audio file, relative to the scheme directory
label          a human-readable name
category       which of the six categories it belongs to
gain           this sound's own level, before the master volume
allowOverlap   whether a second copy may start before the first ends

allowOverlap is true for very few sounds. The type-select sounds are the ones that need it, because they fire faster than they finish.

Audio Formats

The format is decided by looking at the FILE, never at its name. WAV, AIFF and Ogg are recognised by their headers. A file called sound.wav that is really an Ogg will still play.

Writing Your Own

Copy a shipped scheme directory into ~/.cyanotype/share/cysound, rename the directory and the description file to match each other, edit the header name, and replace the audio. It will appear in the menu the next time the panel starts.

A scheme copied to your own directory shadows a shipped one of the same name.

What the Panel Does Not Show

The menu shows the bare directory name. The author, licence and description in the header are read by nothing and displayed nowhere yet.

Next

• What Makes a Sound
• Settings and Files