DOKK / manpages / debian 12 / icewm-common / icesound.1.en
ICESOUND(1) User Commands ICESOUND(1)

NAME

 icesound - play audio files when interesting GUI events happen

SYNOPSIS

icesound [OPTIONS]

DESCRIPTION

The icewm(1) window manager generates so-called GUI events in response to interesting actions, like opening or closing of application windows, switching of work space, etc. GUI events are a property of the X root window. icewm(1) changes this property whenever a new GUI event occurs. Interested applications can listen for changes to this property. There are nearly twenty GUI events defined.

icesound is an application, which is one of the icewm(1) applications, which responds to these GUI events by playing audio files. These sound files are .wav files located in a sounds sub-directory in one of the icewm(1) configuration directories.

icesound supports several common audio interfaces. These are: ALSA, OSS and libAO. These must be enabled during configuration. ALSA, OSS and libAO all require support for libsndfile, which is a very common library to read audio files.

ALSA is rather involved to program and it works, but this could use more testing. It plays at most one sound at a time.
LibAO is a cross-platform audio output library which is a convenient wrapper around a significant number of common audio interfaces. It has a simple configuration file which is documented in the libao.conf(5) manual page.
The Open Sound System (OSS) is a cross-platform sound interface, which is fully supported by icesound.

When multiple audio interfaces are available icesound will examine them all until it finds one which it can connect to and then use that one. By default it prefers them in the order of: AO, ALSA, OSS.

OPTIONS

SPECIFIC OPTIONS

X11 display used by icewm(1) (default: $DISPLAY).
Specifies a directory with sound files. The default is: $HOME/.config/icewm/sounds, $HOME/.icewm/sounds, CFGDIR/sounds and LIBDIR/sounds. See the output of "icewm --directories".
Specifies the audio output interfaces. One or more of: AO, ALSA, OSS separated by comma's (",").
Backwards compatibility only: the default device. Please prefer one of the -A, -O or -S options.
Specifies the OSS device (default: /dev/dsp).
Specifies the ALSA device (default: "default").
Specifies the snooze interval between sound events in milliseconds. Default is 500 milliseconds.
Plays the given sound (name or number) and exits.
Lists the available sound file paths and exits.
Lists the supported sound file names and exits.
Lists the supported audio interfaces and exits.
Be verbose and print some information when sound events occur.

GENERAL OPTIONS

Print a brief usage statement to stdout and exit.
Print the program version to stdout and exit.
Print copying permissions to stdout for the program and exit.

EXIT STATUS

0
Success.
1
General error.
2
Command line error.
3
Subsystems error (i.e cannot connect to server).

SEE ALSO

icewm(1), libao.conf(5), padsp(1), aplay(1), alsamixer(1).

BUGS

Please report bugs at <https://github.com/bbidulock/icewm/issues>.

AUTHOR

Brian Bidulock <mailto:bidulock@openss7.org>.

See --copying for full copyright notice and copying permissions.

LICENSE

IceWM is licensed under the GNU Library General Public License. See the COPYING file in the distribution or use the --copying flag to display copying permissions.

2023-02-05 icewm 3.3.1