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If you want it to use, say, mpg321 instead, it's just a matter of editing that line in your configuration file or using Emacs to access Bongo's built-in customization dialog with M-x customize-group RET bongo RET. For example, one of the back ends Bongo recognizes by default is mpg123. You can link any back end of your choice to a file type as well as pass custom command-line arguments. These programs don't actually do the dirty work of playing your music files rather, they are front ends for other programs. One of the first things to configure is your list of back ends.
#Keyboard shortcuts milkytracker install#
You can install them the same way you'd install any other Emacs package this may vary from distro to distro, but no matter what operating system you're using, you'll probably end up editing some Lisp configuration files.
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The main difference is that EMMS is designed to run unobtrusively in the background, while Bongo emphasizes the user interface.īongo and EMMS are written in Emacs Lisp. Both media players run inside Emacs and provide similar functionality. If Emacs-style digital acrobatics are your modus operandi, check out Bongo and the Emacs Multi-Media System (EMMS). Mp3blaster's default keybindings are better suited for use without X. I had to change several of these in order to use Mp3blaster in GNOME due to conflicts with my global hot keys. You can customize any of the keybindings in your configuration file, which is usually located at ~/.mp3blasterrc. There is also a useful chart on the right side that shows ASCII art playback symbols (such as |> for play) above their respective shortcut keys. You can scroll through this list using + and. One nice feature of Mp3blaster is the top panel showing important keyboard shortcuts for playlist management. Keep an eye out for FLAC support in the future, as it is on the to-do list in the latest source tarball. Currently, these include OGG, WAV and SID. Back then, it was humbly known as “Mp3player”.ĭespite the name, Mp3blaster supports several formats besides MP3s. Its history actually dates back to 1997, before the mainstream really had embraced the MP3 format, let alone the idea of an attractive interface for controlling command-line music playback. That was in 2007, by which time it already was a mature and full-featured application. Mp3blaster was the first console music player I ever used. Note to developers: if you want to write a console music player, take advantage of the Curses Development Kit (CDK), which includes several ready-made widgets, such as scrolling marquees and built-in file browsing. For many text-mode programs, Ncurses is the window (no pun intended) to usability. Sure, a single command that plays a file is quite handy this article, however, focuses on TUI rather than CLI applications. If you've ever played music with a purely command-line application, such as SoX, you know what I'm talking about.
#Keyboard shortcuts milkytracker series#
No one wants to sift through a long man page or resort to Ctrl-c just to stop an annoying song from playing on repeat, and most users (I'm sure some exceptions exist among Linux Journal readers) don't want to type out a series of commands just to ls the songs in an album's directory, decide which one you want to hear and play it, and then play a song in a different directory.
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If you've used GNU Midnight Commander, Lynx or Mutt, you're already familiar with the splendors of Ncurses.Īn intuitive interface, whether textual or graphical, is especially important in a media player. It looks and works much like a graphical user interface, except it's all ASCII-or perhaps ANSI, depending on your terminal. An Ncurses application interface is interactive and, depending on the application, can capture events from keystrokes as well as mouse movements and clicks. Thanks to the Ncurses (New Curses) widget library, developers can design text user interfaces (TUIs) to run in any terminal emulator. This is an introduction for those who want the complete listening experience-browsing, managing and playing music-without leaving the text console. Command-line integration is one of the many advantages of using Linux software. Some of you probably have played audio files from the terminal with one-line commands, such as play, or even used the command line to open a playlist in a graphical music player.
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