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From Crystal Audio
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Crystal Audio 1.2
Version 1.2 is out. See the website for the details.
It is exciting things in it as 9 new recipes.
Crystal Audio 1.0
Version 1.0 of Crystal Audio is out. See Crystal Audio web site to download it.
A Makefile is included in this release. It will install every thing.
README for crystalaudio 1.0
CrystalAudio
http://crystalaudio.tuxfamily.org
CrystalAudio is a FVWM-Crystal configuration tuned for work on audio workstations.
It add a new recipe: Thin Audio (more will come), an improved audio button, volume control in dB, mixed dynamic-fixed speed control of the Alsaplayer as well as a new Music-alsaplayer function.
I try to keep the changes in the original fvwm-crystal files to a minimum.
Why?
FVWM is the only wm that actualy really give me a speed improvement of my system.
FVWM-Crystal is FVWM, but is much easier to configure for a newbie as me. Another aspect of Crystal is at I like much its modular configuration as the monolithic FVWM configuration file.
I can do things with FVWM that no one other wm I know offer me to do. The configuration possibilities are nearly infinite. You can do whatever you want with this wm.
After years with other wm, I was tired with all of them, and Crystal offer me FVWM flexibility and power combined with a full configured desktop environment and an easy way to customize it.
Menu
Many new applications are directly supported in the menu inclusive many audio applications.
The icons as the wallpapers are coming from different sources on my system, and on the internet. So, don't use them for commercial purpose.
I made some icons myself, as example the gnuitar is an adaptation of a pic from David Rovics website.
I made some icons; non exhaustive list: freeweeling, frinika, viewers, wings, tod, cheesetracker, tkman + tkinfo (the same), ghostess, dssi-vst-host, alsaplayer (I like this one), gmorgan (bof), gneutronica, bristol (bof), aeolus, amsynth, gramofile, gtick, snd + snd-ls, tclabc. Certains are just a conversion to png from a pic I found on the site of the respective program or elsewhere. Other have been more complicated to do.
Not all the icons are working, it is on my TODO list.
Installation
To install the CrystalAudio, see the INSTALL file.
Music-alsaplayer function
New preference option: Crystal->Preferences->Music Player->Alsaplayer. If you select alsaplayer as audio player, you will get a full control on this player from the audio button.
Improved audio button
Volume control in db (need aumix) and with the mouse binding (wheel).
Alsaplayer control: pause, play, play/pause, prev, next, stop, and a mixed dynamic-fixed speed control. The speed control allow you to modify the speed by commas, half tone, tone, fifth, octave, and have fixed value too. That both forward and backward. Arbitrary values can be added in order to fit yours need. (See scripts/speed_value and components/functions/Music-alsaplayer.)
The speed function need the program bc to work, and of course alsaplayer. Another solution will be to not use bc but zsh, but bc will work with any shell.
Added a locale test for the alsaplayer control, because it is a possible confusion between the comma and the point in the decimal values in the speed and volume controls. It will use comma for LANG=fr_*, point otherwise. This locale test is needed to insure at those 2 controls will work with any locale. If you have a locale that is not fr_* but use the comma as decimal characters, you must edit component/functions/Music-alsaplayer and change the 4 lines
Test (EnvMatch LANG fr_*)
to use your locales.
If you don't know your locales and those 2 controls are not working, run
echo $LANG
in a terminal and edit this file accordingly.
You will get all the functionalities of this control only with the Thin Audio recipe. The problem is at I cannot figure out if it is possible to get the Alsaplayer control to work well with only 2 buttons in the audio button.
Other
Changed the bottom bar. The pager is now in this bar and added an auto-hide function. Round corners.
Audio button bindings
The bindings on the audio button are as follow:
1: M1: /Player (Menu: Start player alsa, kill player, start player jack) M2: GUI show-hide M3: /Music (Menu: Stop, Play, Pause, Play-Pause, Next, Prev, Change, Jump, Seek) M4: Vol Up M5: Vol Down 2: M1: /Control (Menu: Volume) M2: GUI M3: /Speed (Menu: Speed) M4: Speed Up M5: Speed Down 3: M1: /Playlist (Menu: Load, Clear) M2: Pause M3: Play/Pause M4: Next M5: Prev
Multimedia keys bindings
Music-alsaplayer include the following keys bindings for multimedia keyboards:
Key XF86AudioLowerVolume A C Music-Speed-Down Key XF86AudioRaiseVolume A C Music-Speed-Up Key XF86AudioMute A $[Mod0] Exec exec alsaplayer --volume 0 key XF86AudioMute A C Exec exec alsaplayer --volume 1 key XF86AudioPlay A $[Mod0] Music-PlayPause key XF86AudioPlay A $[Mod1] Music-Speed normal key XF86AudioPlay A C Music-Pause key XF86AudioStop A $[Mod0] Music-Stop key XF86AudioStop A C Music-Pause key XF86AudioStop A $[Mod1] Music-Play Key XF86AudioNext A $[Mod] Music-Next Key XF86AudioPrev A $[Mod] Music-Prev Key XF86AudioMedia A $[Mod] Music-GUI
To get them to work, you may have to define the keys in X as explained in HOWTO Use Multimedia Keys.
Next Releases
The next release will incorporate a script to do a full reorganization of FVWM-Crystal application menu in order to made it compliant with freedsktop specification.
Another script to generate the non existing entries and icons from application type dektop files and application icons will be included in a later release.
Important
This is a note at the attention of new FVWM-Crystal users.
If you want to customize FVWM-Crystal or Crystal Audio, don't modify the files in your main Crystal installation (usually in /usr/share/fvwm-crystal/fvwm or /usr/local/share/fvwm-crystal/fvwm), your changes will be lost with the next upgrade of FVWM-Crystal or Crystal Audio. Just copy the file(s) you want to modify in ~/.fvwm-crystal and modify that copy.
I modified the Startup file (/usr/share/fvwm-crystal/fvwm/preferences/Startup) so at it doesn't start any application by default. The problem was at when doing a local copy, some programs was started 2 times and it was not possible to not start them without to modify /usr/share/fvwm-crystal/fvwm/preferences/Startup.
So, if you want to autostart one of the programs inside the Startup file, copy /usr/share/fvwm-crystal/fvwm/preferences/Startup into ~/.fvwm-crystal/preferences/Startup and uncomment the line(s) corresponding to the program(s) you want to launch. You can of course add any program you want to launch at startup time.
