From: vasudevram <vasudevram@...>
Date: 2006-11-05T23:45:18+09:00
Subject: Re: Rakefile sound effects


Harold Hausman wrote:
> On 11/5/06, Phlip <phlipcpp@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > Ruboids:
> >
> > Suppose I wanted to play a WAV file each time any Rakefile tasks all
> > succeed, and play another one each time any task fails.
> >
>
> .. snip
>
> >
> >  - what's Ruby's dirt-simple but portable sound library?
> >
>
> For windows it definitely doesn't get any easier than win-32 sound:
> http://raa.ruby-lang.org/project/win32-sound/
>
> idk about Linux unfortunately,
> -Harold

Hi,

For Linux, here are a couple of suggestions:

1. try 'cat'ing the WAV file to the sound device - maybe something like
/dev/audio.
2. Write the file's contents to the device.

Do either of the above, from your Ruby code, is what I mean.

I don't know or remember right now how to do the first - 'cat' a file,
i.e. Linux equivalent of the DOS TYPE <file> command - from a Ruby
program. In Python it would be :

import os
os.system("your_command_with_optional_arguments_here")

This does the equivalent of the Linux library function called system -
a C code fragment showing how to use it:

char *cmd = "cat filename.WAV";
int rc;
rc = system(cmd);
if (rc == -1)
{
    /* print error message */
}

A thought: it's not always necessary or worth it to try and make the
code portable across OS's - though a good idea in theory, sometimes the
effort may not be worth it. If you have a quick and easy way to do it
non-portably (i.e. using different pieces of code for Windows and
Linux), nothing wrong with using that approach. Just IMO, of course -
its your call, ultimately. Or, another way could be to write your own
thin wrapper method, with nothing OS-specific in its name or arguments,
and within that, detect the OS and call the appropriate OS-specific
code with in the two branches of an if-else statement, like:

def play_wav_file
    if (Windows)
        # Windows-specific code here
    else # assuming no other OS except Linux
       # Linux-specific code here
    end
end

Replace the (Windows) in the if statement with some appropriate code to
detect the OS your Ruby program is running on. Again, don't know or
remember how to do that in Ruby right now, there surely will be some
simple way.

HTH
Vasudev
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Vasudev Ram
Dancing Bison Enterprises
Software consulting and training
http://www.dancingbison.com
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~