XHIPPO(1) Version 3.5 XHIPPO(1)
Audio Software Audio Software
27th August 2007
NAME
xhippo - A GTK-based playlist manager for various UNIX sound players.
SYNOPSIS
xhippo [options] [dir | file ...]
INTRODUCTION
GNU `xhippo' is a generic playlist manager program for a variety of
UNIX sound players. It's been shown to work with `mpg123', `madplay',
`bplay', `s3mod', `tracker', `xmp', `mtvp', `splay', `ogg123' and
`timidity', and should work with more-or-less anything that can take a
filename on the command line. It is capable of automatically deciding
which player to use depending on a file's extension; the defaults are
set in a config file. It uses textual playlist files, which are easily
generated with the `find' or `locate' utilities. The interface of
`xhippo' is very loosely modelled on the shareware `HippoPlayer'
player for the Amiga.
`xhippo' 3 is firmly in maintainance mode; I will continue to fix bugs
if anyone finds any, but new users are strongly advised to try out the
rewritten `Potamus' branch which will eventually become `xhippo' 4,
available from http://offog.org/code/potamus.html.
`xhippo' was developed under GNU/Linux, but it contains nothing
Linux-specific, so it will probably work on any UNIX-like system where
gcc, glib and GTK are available. (Additionally, it supports GNU long
options where getopt_long is available.) If you're using NetBSD or
FreeBSD, a port is available---see See Installation. `xhippo' can be
compiled as a GNOME 1 application, and it can be compiled against GTK+
1.2, 2.0 or 2.2. `xhippo' supports standard drag-and-drop (which works
with the GNOME, KDE and ROX file managers, and any other supporting
the standard protocol).
`xhippo' comes with NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law. You
may redistribute copies of GNU `xhippo' under the terms of the GNU
General Public License. For more information about these matters, see
the file named COPYING.
If you've installed a previous version of `xhippo', read the ChangeLog
for information on what's changed recently.
`xhippo' uses GNU gettext for internationalisation; you can pick the
language you want by setting your LANG environment variable. If your
C library's gettext support doesn't work, you can give the --with-
included-gettext option to the configure script to make it use the
copy of gettext included in the package.
If you've downloaded `xhippo', please send me some mail to tell me
what you think of it. Suggestions for improvements will be gratefully
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received.
INSTALLATION
Before reading this section, check that your operating system
distribution doesn't already contain a package for `xhippo'. If it
does, then you will probably be best off using that rather than
building it by hand. If it doesn't, or if you want to use a more
recent version, then read on.
`xhippo' uses `GTK+', and requires `GTK+ 1.2' or higher; it needs
`gtk-config' in your path in order to build. It uses GNU `automake'
and `autoconf', so it will automatically detect some features of your
system that can affect `xhippo''s performance. If you have `libid3tag'
from the `libmad' package installed (available along with the
`madplay' MPEG audio player, which works well with `xhippo', from
http://mad.sourceforge.net/), `xhippo' will use it to read ID3 tags.
(If you don't have it installed, `xhippo' will use its own simple
implementation which only understands ID3v1.)
To compile, change to the source directory and do
./configure
make
If you want (minimal) GNOME 1 support, do ./configure --with-gnome
instead of ./configure. If you wish to use `GTK+ 2.0' or higher, do
./configure --with-gtk2. If you encounter problems finding GTK while
building, do ./configure --help to find out how to specify where GTK
files are stored. If you want to install into a different place, do
./configure --prefix=/usr/local/xhippo or wherever. Several other
options are available; try ./configure --help for more information.
To install the program, do
make install
Each user who wants to use `xhippo' should create a .xhippo directory
in their home directory. `xhippo' will look for the config and gtkrc
files there, and will save its window state into the winstate file
there if configured to. Playlists should be kept in a
.xhippo/playlists/ directory.
`xhippo' finds your home directory by looking for the HOME environment
variable. If this is not set by default, you should add a line of the
form
export HOME=`pwd`
or your shell's equivalent to your profile script.
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INVOCATION
To use `xhippo', you need to give it at least one playlist. You can
either load a playlist by specifying it on the command line or in the
config file, or you can build a playlist by dropping files from a file
manager into the `xhippo' window or using the "Add Song" option on the
pop-up menu.
Playlists are files containing names of files to play, one per
line. This is compatible with XMMS's playlist format, so if you have
an XMMS playlist called Nice, you could do xhippo $HOME/.x11amp/Nice
to use it. (GQmpeg can also import `xhippo' playlists.) Alternately,
you can generate them with the `find' command; for instance, if you
keep your .ogg files in your $HOME/sound directory, you could do
find $HOME/sound -name *.ogg | sort >$HOME/.xhippo/playlists/ogg
xhippo $HOME/.xhippo/playlists/ogg
to make a playlist and play it. (With a little trickery, `xhippo' can
be persuaded to automatically build playlists from a directory on
startup; see the example config file for more information.)
Playlists can also include other playlists by name; to do this, put a
line of the form
!foo
in the playlist. `xhippo' will then try to load the file foo as a
playlist, inserting its entries into the list at that point. If the -i
command-line option or readid3 config-file option are enabled,
`xhippo' will try to find ID3 tags in the listed files and will put
them in the list rather than the filenames if found.
To start playing automatically once a playlist is loaded, use the -a
option anywhere on the command line (or the autostart command in the
config file).
You can specify multiple playlists on the command line.
Alternatively, you can specify the -f option to make `xhippo' treat
command-line arguments as files to be added to the playlist rather
than playlists to load (for instance, xhippo -f *.ogg), or -D to make
`xhippo' treat command-line arguments as directories to be searched
for playable files.
xhippo -h or xhippo --help will give you some simple help
instructions.
GUI
The status line shows a little information about the player; it shows
the number of playlist entries upon startup, and what player is being
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used to play the current song (and the PID of the player process, if
you use -p or showpid:1 in the config file). To start a song, click on
it in the list, or click "Next" to pick either a random song (see the
mustplayall config file option below to find out how to control this),
or the next song in the playlist, depending on the setting of the
"Random" checkbox. Clicking on "Prev" will play the previous song (if
the "Random" checkbox is enabled, the last random song picked). To
restart the current song from the beginning, click "Restart". To stop,
click "Stop".
`xhippo' supports a number of keyboard accelerators: `r' for Restart,
`s' or keypad `/' for Stop, `p' or keypad `+' for Pause, `n', keypad
`*' or keypad `-' for Next, `b' for Prev, ``' for Mini, `h' for
Random, `a' for Add File, `d' for Add Directory, `l' for Load
Playlist, `v' for Save Playlist, `o' for Sort By Name, `w' for Sort By
Swapped Name, `t' for Sort By Mtime, `c' for Clear Playlist, `0' to
`9' for user-defined menu entries and `q' for quit.
When the end of a song is reached, `xhippo' will pick either a random
one or the next one from the list depending on whether the "Random"
checkbox is set or not. Optionally, `xhippo' can scroll the list so
that the randomly-picked song is at the top of the visible section; to
enable this, use the -s command-line option, or the scroll:1 config-
file option below. To quit, use your window manager's close button,
pick Quit from the pop-up menu or send `xhippo' a `SIGINT' `Ctrl-C'.
If you check the "Mini" checkbox, the list of files will disappear,
making the window smaller; unchecking it will make it reappear. You
can make `xhippo' start up in this "minified" state by using the -t
switch or the startmini:1 option in your config file.
You can drop `file:' URLs (such as files from your file manager) onto
the `xhippo' window to add songs to the playlist (if you drop a
directory, it will search the directory for files to add). Other URLs
(such as `http:') are not supported, as there's no simple mechanism
that all players understand to stream a file from a network
connection.
Right-clicking on the playlist or the status bar will bring up a pop-
up menu, which allows you to bring up an information window for a song
showing the song's size, location and the date it was last modified,
move songs up and down within the playlist, remove songs from the
playlist, add songs or directories to the playlist, sort the playlist
by song name, swapped song name (the part after the first - in the
name) or song mtime, load and save playlists, or bring up the
preferences dialog. The default directory for loading and saving
playlists is $HOME/.xhippo/playlists. Left-clicking on the status bar
will bring up the information window for the song that is currently
playing.
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If you use the -w switch or the savewinstate config file option,
`xhippo' will save its window position and size to your
$HOME/.xhippo/winstate file when you close the window, and will reload
it on startup.
CONFIG FILE
`xhippo' searches for its config file as /usr/local/etc/xhippo.config
(or wherever you specified with the --prefix option to `configure'),
$HOME/.xhippo/config and xhippo.config (in the current directory); all
that are present will be read.
Most config-file options have a command-line equivalent; these support
both traditional (-x) and GNU-style long (--extended) options. The
long options have the same name as the config-file options; --option
is equivalent to option:1 in the config file (i.e. it forces the
option on). The command-line options override the config file. Invoke
`xhippo' as xhippo --help for more information.
Many config-file options are alterable from within the GUI at runtime
through the Preferences dialog, which can be brought up from the
context menu.
A config file line starting with a # will be ignored.
Lines have the format command:arg1:arg2.... Arguments can be of
several types: booleans, integers, strings and sort types. Booleans
represent on/off conditions; yes, on, true or any non-zero integer
will enable the attribute, and any other value will disable it. For
sort types, none (or any other unrecognised value) means don't sort,
name (or, for backwards compatibility, any non-zero numeric value)
means sort by name, swapped means sort by swapped name, mtime means
sort by mtime.
The following configuration commands are accepted:
`type:extension:command[:options]'
When `xhippo' encounters a file whose name ends in .extension, it
will use command file to play it. The extension is case-
insensitive. options is optional and controls how the player will
be started by `xhippo'; if it contains g then the player will be
started in its own process group (necessary to properly kill some
multithreaded players); if it contains i then the player will be
started with stdin connected to `/dev/null'. Examples:
type:mp3:mpg123 -b 1024, type:ogg:ogg123:i
About the only requirement that `xhippo' has on the players that
it uses is that they must quit cleanly when sent a `SIGTERM', and
be pauseable with `SIGSTOP' and `SIGCONT'. Some versions of the
multithreaded `ogg123' have the problem that, when sent a
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`SIGTERM', the main thread exits immediately but the audio device
isn't closed until the buffer is empty (which could be up to a
couple of seconds later). This means that `xhippo' thinks the
player has exited before the audio device is available again.
This is merely annoying if your operating system and hardware
permits the audio device to be opened by multiple processes at
once, but if it doesn't, then when a song finishes xhippo will
attempt to start the next and fail, and do this repeatedly until
the audio device is available again. One solution is to use
another Vorbis player instead of `ogg123' (such as the somewhat-
more-heavyweight `mplayer').
`autostart:boolean'
If enabled, `xhippo' will play a random song on startup. This is
equivalent to -a on the command line.
`scroll:boolean'
If enabled, `xhippo' will scroll the list when a random item is
selected so that the selected song is visible. This is equivalent
to -s on the command line.
`mustplayall:boolean'
If enabled, `xhippo' will always pick an item that it hasn't
played before from the playlist when asked to pick a random
entry. This continues until it has played all the entries, at
which point it will just pick a random one as before. This is
equivalent to -m on the command line.
`readid3:boolean'
If enabled, `xhippo' will try to read ID3 tags from the files
listed in the playlists and will use them as the playlist entries
if found. This slows down `xhippo' startup considerably, so it's
disabled by default. This is equivalent to -i on the command
line.
`exec:command'
command will be executed as a shell command (using /bin/sh)
before any further config commands are parsed. For an example of
why I included this, look at the example config file
(xhippo.config).
`load:playlist'
playlist will be loaded as a playlist file. This is equivalent to
including playlist on the command line.
`savewinstate:boolean'
If enabled, `xhippo' will save its window position, size and
state (whether it is minified or not) between sessions in the
$HOME/.xhippo/winstate file. If it is zero, `xhippo' will allow
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your window manager to place it, will start with a "standard"
(small) size, and won't start minified (unless the next option is
specified). This is equivalent to -w on the command line.
`startmini:boolean'
If enabled, `xhippo' will start up in the "minified" state, as if
you'd clicked the "Mini" button (even if the winstate file says
that the window wasn't tinified). This is equivalent to -t (for
"tiny") on the command line.
`showpid:boolean'
If enabled, `xhippo' will show the PID of its player process in
the status line when not in mini mode. This is equivalent to -p
on the command line.
`ordered:boolean'
If enabled, `xhippo' will start with the "Random" checkbox turned
off. This is equivalent to -o on the command line.
`stripextension:boolean'
If enabled, `xhippo' will strip the extensions from the filenames
displayed in the playlist. This is equivalent to -S on the
command line.
`leftscroll:boolean'
If enabled, `xhippo' will place the vertical scrollbar on the
left side of the playlist. This looks better with NeXTStep-like
themes. This is equivalent to -l on the command line.
`hideplayeroutput:boolean'
If enabled, `xhippo' will redirect the output (stdout and stderr)
of child player processes to /dev/null. This is equivalent to -q
on the command line.
`sortonload:sorttype'
sorttype specifies how `xhippo' should sort playlists when they
are loaded. -O on the command line is equivalent to
sortonload:name.
`playlistdir:dir'
Use dir as the default directory for loading or saving playlists.
`demanglenames:boolean'
If enabled, `xhippo' will replace _ (underscores) and %20s in
song names with spaces on the display. This is equivalent to -d
on the command line.
`onetime:boolean'
If enabled and either ordered or mustplayall are turned on,
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`xhippo' will stop when all the items in the playlist have been
played. This is equivalent to -1 on the command line.
`playlisttitle:boolean'
If enabled, then `xhippo' will set the window title to include
the name of the current playlist. This is equivalent to -T on the
command line.
`titlebasename:boolean'
If enabled, then `xhippo' will use the basename of the playlist
name when setting the window title if playlisttitle is set. This
is equivalent to -b on the command line.
`nocheckfiles:boolean'
Normally, when a playlist is loaded, `xhippo' will check to see
whether all the listed files exist and discard them if they
don't. If enabled, then `xhippo' won't bother checking, which
will make startup significantly faster on large playlists. This
is equivalent to -c on the command line. Note that `xhippo' will
read the information if it's needed at a later time, so if you
sort the playlist by mtime then it'll need to scan all the files
to get the mtimes.
`writeplaying:boolean'
If enabled, then `xhippo' will write the name of the song that is
currently playing to $HOME/.xhippo/current_song. (If the file
cannot be written, `xhippo' will silently ignore it.) This is
equivalent to -W on the command line.
`skippath:integer'
Normally when displaying song names in the playlist, `xhippo'
will use the basename of the file (i.e. it will strip off the
path to the file). If integer is set to something other than
zero, `xhippo' will only strip the first integer elements of the
path; this could be useful if you sort your music collection into
albums and want to display the album names in the playlist. This
is equivalent to -k integer on the command line.
`usercommand:description:command'
Define a user command. This will add an entry titled description
to the context menu (and assign it a numerical accelerator
starting from `0'); when the entry is picked, command will be run
(with a single instance of %s in the command replaced by the full
filename of the selected song, or the empty string if the menu is
invoked while not over a song).
`commandlinesongs:boolean'
If enabled, `xhippo' will treat command-line arguments as songs
to add to the playlist rather than playlists to load. This is
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equivalent to -f on the command line; you can therefore do
something like xhippo -f *.ogg to start `xhippo' listing all the
`.ogg' files in the current directory.
`commandlinedirs:boolean'
If enabled, `xhippo' will treat command-line arguments as
directories to search for songs to add to the playlist. This is
equivalent to -D on the command line.
`deletewhenplayed:boolean'
If enabled, `xhippo' will remove songs from the playlist once
they have been played. This is equivalent to -x on the command
line.
`persistplaylist:boolean'
If enabled, `xhippo' will attempt to load a playlist from
$HOME/.xhippo/saved_playlist on startup (if no other files are
given on the command line), and will save the current playlist to
that file on exit. This is equivalent to -P on the command line.
`commandlineguess:boolean'
If enabled, `xhippo' will attempt to guess what the command-line
arguments are. If they have a known extension (one specified with
type above) then they are assumed to be songs; if they are
directories they are assumed to be directories; otherwise they
are assumed to be playlists. You probably want this turned on
unless you're in the habit of calling your playlist playlist.ogg.
This is equivalent to -g on the command line.
`persistfrequently:boolean'
If enabled and persistplaylist is also enabled, `xhippo' will
save the current playlist whenever a new song is started. You may
want this if you're in the habit of killing xhippo randomly.
GTKRC
To allow for customised GTK appearances, `xhippo' reads a standard
gtkrc file in $HOME/.xhippo/gtkrc. For more information about gtkrc
files, consult the GTK documentation.
DISTRIBUTION
If you want an archive to give to somebody else, invoke make dist in
the `xhippo' source directory. This will produce the same xhippo-
VERSION.tar.gz file that I distribute. If you wish to mail me a
modified version, do exactly the same (after removing the doc
directory); I can then `diff' it against my last release to see what
you've changed. (Alternately, just send me a diff -Naur between a
clean distributed `xhippo' and your modified version.)
CONTACT
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`xhippo' is far from perfect. Please contact <bug-xhippo@gnu.org> if
you discover any bugs, or have any suggestions.
`xhippo' was written by me, Adam Sampson, <ats@offog.org>. My other
software can always be found at http://offog.org/; `xhippo' is now a
GNU (http://www.gnu.org/) application and is distributed from
ftp://ftp.gnu.org/ or from mirror sites.
The original German translation was done by Volker Assmann,
<volka@bigfoot.de>, who was also responsible for betatesting.
Hubert Feyrer first alerted me to the problems with GTK+-1.0 and 1.1
compatibility, and created the NetBSD package. Rod Taylor created the
FreeBSD port, and Kevin Lo created the OpenBSD port.
Craig Knudsen provided a routine to read ID3 tags.
Joseph Turian suggested the idea of file inclusion in playlists.
Jeff Covey supplied a Perl script which provided the functionality of
the current "Load" button, which encouraged me build the feature in.
Kevin Everets implemented the Pause button, the leftscroll option,
translated the documentation to texinfo and provided patches for or
suggested various other features.
Several other people who contributed are credited in the ChangeLog
file.
AUTHOR
Adam Sampson <ats@offog.org> and others; see the section ChangeLog for
details.
SEE ALSO
mpg123(1), ogg123(1), bplay(1), xmp(1), mtvp(5), s3mod(5), tracker(5),
madplay(5)
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