dtSounds(1)
dtSounds - customization panel for controlling desktop & system sounds
As shipped in IRIX 6.5.15. Unchanged since IRIX 6.5.
NAME dtSounds - customization panel for controlling desktop & system sounds SYNOPSIS /usr/sbin/dtSounds DESCRIPTION The dtSounds customization panel lets the user toggle which sounds the SGI system produces. The panel presents a set of six toggle buttons: Mute System Startup & Shutdown Tunes Desktop Sounds System Alerts Sounds Keyboard Bell Key Click Play Desktop Sounds Through (different output choices) Mute System Checking the Mute System toggle will disable the specified output interface (if it supports mute). If the user subsequently launches audiopanel to change the mute state of the system, then later brings up the dtSounds panel, the dtSounds panel will update itself to show the actual mute state properly. Checking this toggle is essentially equivalent to checking the Mute toggle on audiopanel. If audiopanel is not installed, then this toggle will appear dimmed on the dtSounds panel. To install the audiopanel software, install the dmedia_eoe.sw.tools subsystem from the IRIX(R) distribution CD. Startup & Shutdown Tunes Checking the Startup & Shutdown Tunes toggle will make audible the music riffs that play when the user powers on and powers off the SGI system. Checking this toggle sets the non-volatile RAM volume (see the nvram(1M) and sgikopt(2) reference pages for details), which means the panel will prompt the user to enter the root password before it lets the user toggle these sounds. Desktop Sounds Checking the Desktop Sounds toggle will enable percussive sounds to play in response to various actions the user performs in the desktop environment. For example, when the user moves an icon on the background, a sound like sand shifting will play, and when the user double-clicks an icon, a hollow double snap will play. To control the volume of these sounds, use audiopanel. Some applications will not recognize changes in the Desktop Sounds selection until the user logs out and logs in again. Because specific icon types can be set to not use the visual launch effect or the launch sound (see ftr), icons of those types will never exhibit the launch effect or play the launch sound when they are double- clicked, even when the dtSounds(1) Desktop Sounds toggle or the Show Launch Effect toggle is checked. For example, none of the device icons uses the visual launch effect, and none of the sound icons uses the launch sound. The Desktop Sounds toggle used to appear on the Desktop customization panel in IRIX 6.2 and previous releases. If soundscheme is not running, then this toggle will appear dimmed. For information about how to change the sound assignments in the preset collection of desktop sounds, see the Sounds and Color Schemes appendix in the desktop_eoe release notes. System Alerts Sounds Checking the System Alerts Sounds toggle will let the user hear warning sounds and alarms from the syserrpanel application. For example, when the system system runs out of disk space, a dialog window appears onscreen and a cymbal crash plays. Checking this toggle is essentially equivalent to checking the Sound Effects toggle on syserrpanel. If the IRIX 6.3 or later version of syserrpanel is not installed, then this toggle will appear dimmed on the dtSounds panel. To install the syserrpanel software, install the sysmon.sw.notifier subsystem from the IRIX distribution CD. Keyboard Bell Checking the Keyboard Bell toggle will enable a high-pitched beep to play as the keyboard bell. For example, when the user presses the Esc key when the cursor is on the command line in a UNIX shell, the keyboard bell plays. This executes an xset -b off or xset -b on and sets the keyclick percent to either 0 or 51, respectively. Key Click Checking the Key Click toggle will enable a typewriter-like dull click to play whenever the user presses a key on the keyboard. Checking this toggle is essentially equivalent to checking the Key Click toggle on the keyboard panel. If the user subsequently launches keyboard to toggle the keyboard bell, then later brings up the dtSounds panel, the dtSounds panel will update itself to show the actual keyboard bell state properly. The reverse is also true for the keyboard panel. Play Desktop Sounds Through In IRIX 6.5, users can redirect the desktop sounds from the default audio output device to an alternate output device available on the system. For example, the user can redirect sounds to the rear audio jacks on an O2, while devoting the speaker and headphone device to some other application. FILES $HOME/.Sgiresources $HOME/.desktop-<hostname>/FmState $HOME/.desktop-<hostname>/DefaultAudioDevice A record of the choices the user makes on this panel is stored in the file $HOME/.Sgiresources where $HOME is the location of the user's home directory. Users should not change the dtSounds resource settings in this file by hand. In IRIX 6.5, the dtSounds panel sends messages to the file manager by saving settings to the special FmState file in the $HOME/.desktop- <hostname> directory, where <hostname> is the result of running the hostname(1) command. The file manager detects when this file changes and applies the settings in the desktop environment. The FmState file is not meant to be altered by end users directly. When the user changes the default output device, the choice is recorded in the $HOME/.desktop-<hostname>/DefaultAudioDevice file. The /varX11/xdm/Xsession.dt script reads the contents of this file the next time the user logs in, to restore the user's preference. This file is not intended to be altered by end users directly. NOTES Like most other customization panels, the dtSounds panel has the ``runonce'' feature, meaning only one instance of the application will run from the toolchest at one time. Attempting to launch the application a second time will have the effect of deiconifying the application window or popping it to the top on the current desk. SEE ALSO IID(1), audiopanel(1), desktop(1), keyboard(1), nvram(1M), sgikopt(2), soundscheme(1), syserrpanel(1), xset(1), ftr(1) For more information about the entire IRIX Interactive Desktop environment and about the XUSERFILESEARCHPATH environment variable, see the IID(1) man page.