Otherware/Otherware_1_SB_Development.iso/amiga/misc/amigalib.lha/edplayer.lha/edplayer/EdPlayer.DOCs/EdP2.0.Buttons.DOC

Text File | 1992-07-11 | 22KB | 358 lines

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                  A N D   N O W ,   T H E   B U T T O N S :

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If you're reading this, I hope you have tried playing with EdPlayer a bit.
You know that there are a lot of buttons on the main panel that appears
when you run the program.  Here they are, left-to-right, slowly working
downward from the top.  (There are no keyboard equivalents for any of
these buttons in this release.  You'll have to use your mouse.  Sorry).

POWER:  This exits EdPlayer rather immediately.  No "Are you Sure?" prompts
        or anything, because they sometimes annoy me.  Of course, all the
        proper shutdown routines are run, such as unloading the current
        song, etc.  Note that the close gadget in the "iconified" WB window
        has this same function (see ICONIFY below).
        (ARexx/telled users: see KILL, SELF in ARexx section)

"T":  Tempo control.  NoiseTracker modules can have different tempos
      depending on whether you are in PAL or NTSC mode.  This button
      toggles between the two tempos, with the current status appearing in
      the LED display.  Note that this option is memorized "per song" in
      program mode (see PRG below).  Note that modules composed with
      ProTracker should always be played in PAL mode.  ProTracker
      always sounds like it is in PAL, even on NTSC machines.
      (ARexx/telled users: see PALM, NORM, NTSC in ARexx section)

HELP:  This is the "Online Help Function."  I call it "online" because you
       can get help while you are using EdPlayer.  (Of couse, this being an
       Amiga, you can multitask and get help from the DOCs while you are
       using EdPlayer too.  Oh, never mind.)  Anyway, you click here to
       turn help on, then click on the buttons you want help with, and then
       click here again to turn help back off.

"|<":  EJECTs current song, moves to previous program selection, and
       displays title of that selection.  You can use this to flip through
       a program, select where you want to start, and press PLAY to start.
       (see PRG below).
       (ARexx/telled users: see PREV in ARexx section)

">|":  Same as "|<" above, but moves to NEXT prg selection rather than the
       previous one.
       NOTE: In random mode, this button jumps to a random song, not the
       next one.
       (ARexx/telled users: see NEXT in ARexx section)

?:  The button with the little question mark on it is the random play
    button.  It toggles a similar-looking LED.  When the LED is lit,
    the current program plays in random order.  Also, the NEXT command
    and the ">|" button (just above) jump to random songs rather than
    the next song when this is on.  The status of the random LED is
    saved when a program is saved.
    (ARexx/telled users: see RAND, SAVA, SAVC in ARexx section)

PRG:  OK, now it's time to explain programs.  A "program" is a list of
      module filenames that EdPlayer can memorize, along with two options
      per name (PAL / NTSC and FADE / NO FADE).  When such a list exists,
      EdPlayer will attempt at the end of each song to load and play the
      next song in the program, using the options for that song.  The two
      buttons listed above this one scroll through the program.
      Now about the PRG button itself:
      Be careful with this button!!  It's main use is for ERASING the
      current program!  This is because CREATING programs is more easily
      done with the OPEN button described below.  If EdPlayer has a program
      in memory, the "PRG" LED will light up on the display.
*2.0*>It is now possible to save programs!  Yay!  But not from the panel.
      (aww...) Look in the ARexx Commands section for SAVA and SAVC.
      (ARexx/telled users: see JUKE, ERAS, SAVA, and SAVC in ARexx section)

EJECT "^":  Unloads current song, freeing lots of CHIP memory.  Does NOT
            erase current program.
            (ARexx/telled users: see EJEC in ARexx section)

Fade Slide:  A tiny slider to the right of the EdPlayer logo controls
             the rate at which songs fade out.  Because it is small and
             its effects are large, numbers appear in the info bar at
             the bottom when you use this slider.  A fade rate of 1 is
             slow fade, 4 is normal fade, and higher numbers are faster
             fades.  Note that if the FADE LED (yellow triangle) is not
             lit, this slide is ignored, and the song does not fade at all.
             Be sure to look at the description of the Fade BUTTON (below).
             (ARexx/telled users: see AUTO in ARexx section)

OPEN:  For this one, you need the kd_freq.library version 3.0 or higher in
       your LIBS: directory!  This library might have come with the
       EdPlayer archive, because its copyright notice is as follows:

>>If you want to use 'kd_freq.library' in any freely distributable program,
>>you may include the 'kd_freq.library' file as long as you also include the
>>'FR_User.DOC' file and mention 'Copyright 1990  Khalid Aldoseri'.

       Oh yes, the author of this library, Khalid Aldoseri, can be reached
       at the following address:
                        Khalid Aldoseri
                        P.O. Box 505
                        Manama, Bahrain.
                        Fax: [phone]
                      Compuserve 75166,2531
       And I almost forgot to mention that this library is Copyright 1990
       Khalid Aldoseri.  Now that you have the kd_freq.library, you can use
       the EdPlayer OPEN button to bring up it's file requester.  With this
       requestor, you should select the filename of a module you want to
       hear.  If there is no program, the song will load and begin to play.
       However, if there IS a program (even an empty one created with PRG),
       the song's name will be added to the program.  NOTE THAT A MUCH
       EASIER way to make programs is with the file requester's "Extended
       Select" feature.  To use this, hold down the SHIFT key and click
       several module filenames.  As you click them, they light up.
       (If you press shift-rightarrow, ALL the files in a dir will light up).
***>   THEN, you MUST hit the "SELECT" gadget at the top right.
       When you press "OK", ALL of the filenames will be added, in
       alphabetical order, to the END of the current program.  If no
       program exists when you use this feature, one will automatically be
       created.  To start any program, press PLAY.
       NEW for EdP v1.1:  EdPlayer can now use the req.library if it can't
       find the kd_freq.library.  You have to be a little more careful
       with req, however:  it lets you specify drive names ("DF0:") instead
       of volume names ("MyMods1:") so if you have 30 disks and you
       program them all as DF0:something, you're going to be CONFUSED!!
*2.0*> Various notes for v2.0 and up:
       I cannot control many features of the file requesters.  All of the
       file requesters are written by OTHER PEOPLE, and are only called
       on by EdPlayer as libraries.  Please report bugs in a file requester
       to the author of that file requester, not me!!  The next version
       of EdPlayer may support the asl.library (Workbench 2.0 standard).
       (ARexx/telled users: see LOAD, PLAY, JUKE, FREQ in ARexx section)

"<<":  Rewind button.  This button skips back to the start of the previous
       position ("Pos") in the song.  If you hit it a few times, it sounds
       like you are "rewinding" to an earlier part of the song.

">>":  FastForward button.  This button skips ahead to the start of the
       next position ("Pos") in the song.  You can hit it a few times
       to skip over any boring parts of a song.

PLAY "|>":  This button has many functions.  If no song is loaded, it will
            try to get a module name from the program and load & play it.
            If a song IS loaded, but not playing, it will ignore the
            program and play the current song.  If a song is ALREADY
            playing, this button will PAUSE it (either immediately or
            fade-to-pause, see FADE).  Finally, if a song is paused, and
            you press this, the song will continue, either immediately or
            fade-back-in (see FADE again).
            (ARexx/telled users: see PLAY, PAUS, CONT in ARexx section)

STOP:  This button has a square on it.  It stops the music IMMEDIATELY,
       regardless of the state of the "fade" light.  If you want a
       fade-out, fade to a PAUSE and then press STOP.  I made it this way
       because I found that in practice, when people press STOP, they just
       want the music to STOP right there because they're debugging or
       something, and fading is mostly for song changes in a program.
       NOTE that you can NOT continue after a STOP!  You must start again
       from the beginning of that song.  If you wanted to continue, you
       should have pressed PAUSE (a function of the PLAY button above).
       (ARexx/telled users: see STOP, FADE in ARexx section)

LOOP:  This button has a little curved arrow on it, signifying a loop.  It
       will toggle on and off the similar-looking LOOP LED on the display.
       When this LED is lit, the current song will loop to the beginning
       (or wherever the composer decided it would loop to) and keep
       playing.  In program mode, each song will come to an end, but the
       whole program will loop when it runs out of titles.  When this LED
       is NOT lit, the current song will end (either immediately or
       fade-to-stop, see FADE) and in program mode, the program will end
       when it runs out of titles (but it won't be erased).  Note that
       certain MED modules have a special "STOP" command ($FFE) encoded
       into the end of the song, and these modules will NEVER LOOP,
       regardless of this button.
       Random programs also ignore this button, they just go on selecting
       songs at random and never stop...
       (ARexx/telled users: see LOOP, AUTO in ARexx section)

FADE:  This button has a triangle that is supposed to signify volume fading
       away (sort of).  Whenever you use PAUSE or CONTINUE, or when the
       song reaches an end just before a program change, the song can
       either stop/start immediately, or gradually fade out/in.
       NOTE the two kinds of music modules:
         1) The kind where the music comes to a nice stopping point at
            the end, and doesn't need to loop.
         2) The kind where the end of the score sounds like it should
            keep going!  Then it loops to somewhere in the middle.  These
            tunes appear to have NO stopping place, because anywhere you
            stop them makes it sound abruptly cut off.
       Most module players only handle the first kind of tune.  But with
       EdPlayer's FADE function, a song of the second type can loop when
       it reaches the end, and then fade to a stop in part of the song
       you already heard (where it will be after a loop, obviously).
       This puts a very nice pseudo-ending on an otherwise endless tune.
       HOWEVER, if you apply this to a song of the first type, you get
       something that sounds like it stops, re-starts, and then fades.
       A LOT of people reported this as a BUG!  Well, it's NOT.
       Just turn FADE OFF for those songs, with this nice FADE button!  The
       button toggles on and off the similar-looking FADE LED on the
       display.  When this LED is lit, EdPlayer will try to fade the song
       as mentioned.  When this LED is dark, EdPlayer will just do instant
       stops and starts.  If a song comes to an end, and LOOP is off (or
       program is on) and FADE is on, the song will LOOP anyway, but begin
       fading to a stop, and the program change will occour after the fade.
       Note that this button has NO effect on (1) the STOP button or (2)
       MED modules that have the special STOP effect ($FFE) encoded into
       them.  However, these MED modules WILL trigger program changes, of
       course.  SETTING the fade rate:  see the "PAUS" command in the
       ARexx section!!
       (ARexx/telled users: see PAUS, LOOP, AUTO, FADE in ARexx section)

FILTER OVERRIDE:  This button looks like a small arrow mushed in with the
                  filter button.  It toggles a similar-looking LED.
                  When lit, EdPlayer will not change the audio filter
                  except for specific requests from the user such as
                  the filter button or FILT command.  When not lit,
                  the filter is automatically controlled by EdPlayer.
                  (ARexx/telled users: see FILT in ARexx section)

FILTER:  This button looks like a dot with little waves coming out of it.
         It has a similar-looking FILTER LED on the display panel that
         shows the status of the Amiga's audio filter, which is also
         displayed by your Amiga's so-called "power" LED.  Pressing
         this button toggles the state of the audio filter.  Unless
         you have filter override on, you won't need this button much,
         because the filter is normally automatically handled by EdPlayer.
         (ARexx/telled users: see FILT in ARexx section)

ICONIFY:  This button looks like a WB 1.3 back gadget, but it's NOT the one
          in the title bar.  It gets rid of the CD-player like controls,
          saving a bit of CHIP mem, and produces a tiny "iconified" window
          on the WB screen.  This window has only two options: The close
          gadget will exit EdPlayer (see Power above), and the right mouse
          button, if pressed when the window is selected, will bring back
          the CD-player look.  Of course, all the EdPlayer functions remain
          in effect in this mode, like program changes and ARexx messages.
          Plus, this mode saves a bunch of CPU time, because EdPlayer can
          sleep rather than updating the display every video cycle.  If you
          REALLY need to conserve memory, you should hide EdPlayer
          altogether and then close the WB screen, using one of the ARexx
          commands and then some utility for closing WB:
          (ARexx/telled users: see MENU, ICON, HIDE in ARexx section)

DISPLAY:  This button looks like a calculator 8.  It toggles between
          four display modes, described in the LED Display section
          (EdP2.0.LEDs.DOC)
          (ARexx/telled users: see DISP in ARexx section)

BARS:  This button is mushed up with DISPLAY because it controls a
       different part of the display:  The moving bars.  It cycles
       the bars through three modes:
    1) Normal VU-meters, like EdPlayer 1.1a and before.  The bars display
       voices 0,1,2,3 (speakers: Left, Right, Right, Left).
    2) Sorted VU-meters.  The bars display voices 0,3,2,1
       (speakers: Left, Left, Right, Right).  Easier to watch than (1).
       (NOTE:  I just recently got an A3000, and found that the audio
       outputs were marked wrong!!  The one marked "left" output the
       right speaker's channel and vice versa.  I know of several
       A500s and A2000s that say voices 0 and 3 are LEFT).
    3) Spectrum Analyzer.  Thanks to Eric Parkin for drawing this.
       It displays notes based on their frequency (pitch).  Because there
       is so little room for a wide range of notes, EdPlayer keeps track
       of the collective avarage of all the notes in a song so far, and
       "pans" the analyzer to focus in on the most-used range of notes.
       (ARexx/telled users: see DISP in ARexx section)

MIDI:  This button is supposed to look like a MIDI plug.  Sort of.  Anyway,
       it toggles MIDI on and off.  The MIDI LED on the display shows the
       current status of MIDI.  When the light is off, your serial port is
       free for things like downloading, etc., and when the light is on,
       the serial port is allocated for MED modules to send MIDI data with.
       Note to midi.library users!!!!  See "MIDL" in ARexx section!
       (ARexx/telled users: see MIDI, MIDL, NOMI in ARexx section)

VOLUME SLIDE:  Well, what do YOU think it does?  It controls the volume of
               a piece of music.  Also, it might NOT be such a good idea to
               fuss around with this thing while the music is already
               trying to FADE in/out of its own accord due to the FADE LED.
               (ARexx/telled users: see VOLU in ARexx section)

EDSYNTH POPUP:  To the right of the volume slider is a small button with
                three shapes on it that are supposed to resemble piano
                keys.  This button reveals (or removes) a fun new toy
                called "EdSynth" (thank Al for the name).  EdSynth
                has a much more accurate rendition of a piano keyboard on
                it, and the keys will light up different colors as notes
                are played on them by the current song.  The color of
                the note is controlled by the instrument number playing
                it.  There may be more instruments than there are colors,
                in which case two instruments may share a color.  The
                colors in this version are: (when not affected by MCOL):
                    Red, Green, Light Grey, Yellow, Tan,
                    ICKY, ICKY PURPLE,
                    Inverted (black keys turn white, white keys turn black),
                    and checkerboard (red/green mix).
                EdSynth is rather fun to watch; I recommend keeping it
                open when you don't need as much viewing area of other
                screens.
                (ARexx/telled users: see SYNT in ARexx section)

INFO BAR:  You can click in the space between EdPlayer's "feet" to display
           the name and author info of the current song.  Also, this space
           shows other useful stuff like the online help, and the version
           info when you first start EdPlayer or when you come out of an
           Iconify or HIDE.  NOTE TO MODULE AUTHORS:  If you want to create
           some "author info" to appear in this bar whenever your module
           plays, there are 2 ways:  (1) For PT-MODs:  Create some
           instrument names preceded by a "#".  Each instrument name in the
           PT-MOD that starts with a # will be linked together (add your
           own spaces!) and displayed in the bar.  (2) For MED MODs:
           Create an "annotext" as the MED documentation describes.
*2.0*>     As of EdPlayer v2.0, EdP will search the instrument names
           of MED mods that contain them (MED 3.2 and up) and will
           add any instrument names starting with a "#" to the end
           of the annotext.
           SPECIAL EFFECTS:  EdPlayer can handle some neat effects in the
           author info of a module (NT OR MED).  These effects all start
           with a <`> mark, NOT to be confused with the more ordinary <'>
           mark.  PLEASE NOTICE the difference between ` and ' !!!!
           The ` key, on my American keyboard, is in the top-left, just
           under the ESC key.
           Here are the effects:  (lowercase letters ONLY!)
                     `s  =  SLOW.  Text will scroll at 1/4 normal speed.
                     `n  =  NORMAL.  Text resumes normal scroll speed.
                     `f  =  FAST.  Text goes THREE TIMES normal speed!!

                     `r  =  RED.  Text from here on will be red.
                     `y  =  YELLOW
                     `g  =  GREEN
                     `t  =  TAN   (EdPlayer's tanish color used on buttons)
                     `p  =  ICKY, ICKY PURPLE!!
                     `w  =  WHITE, the default.

                     ``  =  ` (if you really want a ` mark to appear).

           To use any of these effects, just insert them in the author text
           of your module.  Note that using a ` mark at all will FORCE the
           text to scroll, even if it was short enough to fit all on the
           lo-res screen at once (NOT LIKELEY!!).
           NOTE: If you play a MED mod with MCOL turned on, the colors
           produced by the above effects may be different, depending on
           the palette of the MED mod in question.
           (ARexx/telled users: see MESS, MCOL in ARexx section)

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The following are only visible when the EdSynth keyboard is displayed:
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EDSYNTH BOGUS PITCHBENDER:  When my brother Al drew me a keyboard, he
                decided to write "EdSynth" on it, and he also drew
                a small pitchbender on the left side.  I left both of
                these things where they were, because they look kind of
                cool.  However, they do nothing else.  In fact, the only
                mouse-sensitive part of EdSynth is its power button.
                Obviously, EdSynth is purely for viewing pleasure.

EDSYNTH POWER:  This power button just gets rid of EdSynth, unlike the
                main EdPlayer power button which exits the whole program.
                Currently there is no way to display only EdSynth and not
                the CD panel.

That's all the buttons in this version.  Hope ya like 'em.