readme

This is a rather bloated "mini" mp3 player distribution for the NIC. If the help you need isn't in this file, mail nic@tenhand.com Use the Space key to scroll through this document.

Window manager

The window manager is now blackbox, which may seem strange. Use Alt-Tab to go between windows and click the right mouse button on the desktop to run programs. If a program disappears, click both mouse buttons on the desktop and select the ICONS tab. If your monitor can display 1024x768, hold down the left Ctrl-Alt and the plus sign on the keypad. Ctrl-Alt-"-" reverses. To resize a window, drag the last few pixels on the lower right hand side of a window.

To Play MP3s

For full documentation on xmms, look at the xmms documentation page
Use the button on the front of the nic cd player to eject the system cd. Insert a new cd with MP3 files on it. It should automatically get mounted at /cdrom. Once you've got a cd in, right click on the desktop, and then select MP3 player. Click on the thing that looks like the eject button to start adding cd tracks. The Mp3 player will automatically look for files in the /cdrom directory. The catch is that it may look before the cd is all the way mounted. If this happens, the directory will look blank. Navigate up one directory, and then back to the /cdrom directory. Once you have added all the songs you want, click on the close button to make the playlist editor go away, or alt-tab to the main player and click the play button.
Playlists can be saved between reboots by saving them in /flash/xmms/. or /.xmms (should be the same place)

Web browser

This web browser is w3m, a text based browser similar to Lynx, but with mouse control. Type "?" to get help. It uses the same key commands as lynx if you know them. The browser tries to recognize shoutcast style playlist files, and many types of .m3u and streamed files. It does NOT work with plain, non streamed mp3 files. (xmms doesn't support reading from STDIN,)
You can change the browser font colors by typing "o", and then selecting what you want. To save, click on one of the [OK] boxes.
If the screen gets full of noise when you launch a playlist URL, try typing Ctrl-L. That should clear up the screen.
Xmms may choke if you start browsing the web after using the web browser to load a playlist. Stopping & starting the playlist is usually enough to clear things up.

Misc

This player mounts the flash disk used by the normal NIC disk & writes contents to it. This means that it is *possible* to crash the nic & screw up your bookmarks. The odds are the same as if you power down your NIC with the factory CD in it. If possible, shutdown nicely using the menu or a xterm.

You can't eject a cd while it's being played. Stop the player and you should be able to eject it (by pressing the button on the cd tray)

TODO/ Bugs:

  1. trim out unneeded pixmaps & all those libs
  2. Various Xmms stalls & that strange bouncing around a song. Probably caused by the xmms-plugin script. Starting & stopping tends to work.
  3. Eject doesn't work with supermount. It would be nice.
  4. Windows appear all over the screen. Find homes for them.

End of documentation

building toasters is hard. My hat's off to kerbango & the others.