JUKEBOX(1)

NAME
jukebox - play a list of sounds (songs)

SYNOPSIS
jukebox [-afhlqrsv] [directory...]

DESCRIPTION
Jukebox is a small program that plays a list of songs on the host of your choice, using Mark Boyns' rplay library. This allows you to listen to some background music while you are working or doing anything else. There are two ways to build a list of songs : you may use the -f option followed by a file name which contains a list of song names (like rplay.conf), or you may simply give the name of a directory. All the .au files in this directory will be added to the list. While the jukebox is playing, you may skip a song with Ctrl-C. This will stop the current song and play the next one. You may also use Ctrl-Z, which will stop both the current song and the jukebox. Once the jukebox has been stopped with a Ctrl-Z, you may continue with the next song : use fg or whatever your shell needs to restart a stopped process. If you want to terminate the process, use kill XXX or kill -HUP XXX, where XXX is the process number of the jukebox.

OPTIONS

-h hostname[:hostname...]
    Play sounds on this or all of these hosts. This option will override the default host defined by the RPLAY_HOST environment variable.

-f <name>
    Take a list of sounds from the file <name>. This file should contain one sound name per line. You may supply several lists of songs, each one preceded by the -f flag.

-l  Loop mode. The jukebox will keep on playing until stopped with a Ctrl-Z or another signal.

-a  Play the songs in alphabetical order (file names). This might be useful if the file names begin with the name of the artist or group, for example.

-r  Play the songs in a random order. If the jukebox is in loop mode, a new list (in a different order) will be created each time the jukebox reaches the last song.

-q  Quiet mode. Suppresses output except for error messages.

-s <n>
    Sleep between songs ( <n> is in milliseconds and may be negative). If you give a negative number, the two songs will be superimposed. You may use this option to create a "fade in / fade out" effect (see examples below).

-v <n>
    Change the default play volume.

EXAMPLES

Suppose you have several directories named "songs/XXX", where "XXX" is the name of some artist or group. If you want to play some music on "verif1" (replace this with the name of your host), you might type something like this :

    jukebox -h verif1 -r -s -4000 songs/*

This will play all the songs from these directories, taken in a random order. There is also a "negative delay" of 4 seconds. If all the songs begin with a "fade in" and end with a "fade out", you will get a pretty good effect. If you want to play your favourite songs over and over on the default host, you could type :

    jukebox -l -q songs/kate_bush songs/queen songs/rem ...

(By the way, it is simpler to go in the "songs" directory to type these commands as the paths would be shorter, but this is only an example). Here, the -q option is used to suppress all normal output. You can then use the jukebox as a background job if you are short of terminals. You may also put the names of your favorite songs in a file, and use this file with the -f option. You may even create several files and use them in any order, like this :

    jukebox -f rock_n_roll -f pop_music songs/rap ...

In this example, the songs are taken from the files "rock_n_roll" and "pop_music", but also from the directory "songs/rap".

SEE ALSO
rplay(1), rplayd(1), rplay.conf(5)

AUTHOR
This program was written by Raphael Quinet (University of Liege, Belgium) He can be reached by E-mail as follows:
    quinet@montefiore.ULg.ac.Be
The jukebox program makes use of Mark Boyns' rplay package which can play multiple sounds on remote machines.
He can be reached by E-mail as follows:
    boyns@SDSU.edu

BUGS
You have to supply the full pathnames in the sound lists. The program's timer doesn't expect the sounds to be delayed in any way while they are playing. This leads to disastrous effects if the song has to be fetched from another server or if someone pauses the audio device.