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Audio Applications Like cdparanoia, the cdrecord utility is a very flexible program and as such has a large number of parameters. The parameters you need vary according to the type of CD format you are writing (for example, whether you’re creating an audio CD or a data CD). For a full list of parameters, you can check the website or type the application’s name at the command line: $ cdrecord … Options: -version dev-target print version information and exitSCSI target to use as CD/DVD-Recorder … The example command below records an audio CD by writing the .wav files created by using the cdparanoia utility: $ cdrecord -v dev=2,0 -dao *.wav This example assumes that the .wav files are located in the current directory, and that a blank CD-R or CD-RW is in the drive. Here’s how the parameters used here affect the application’s behavior: Parameter Meaning -v Indicates that progress is displayed via the verbose switch -dev Indicates the SCSI target for the device identified. Each SCSI device is assigned an ID; in this case it’s 2,0. -dao Indicates that a single session is to be written to the CD and closed when finished *.wav Indicates that all files matching this specification should be written to the CD Note You can also use the dvdrecord utility to record information on writable DVD drives such as DVD-RAM. There’s more information on this at http://www.nongnu.org/dvdnools/. tHE FEATURES PROVIDED BY mOZILLA ( GnomeToaster If you find all this command line stuff too daunting, you could use the GnomeToaster application. GnomeToaster is a graphical CD recording utility written for the GNOME environment. You can start this application by selecting Main Menu | System Tools | More System Tools | CD Writer, or by typing gtoaster at the command line: 153

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Audio Applications $ cdparanoia -B -w “l-” Here’s how to interpret the parameters in this command: Parameter Meaning -B Indicates that this is a batch and each track will be extracted to a separate file -w Indicates that the output file is to be a Microsoft .wav file “1-” Indicates that you wish to extract from the first track to the end of the disc Note You can find out more about cdparanoia at http://www.xiph.org/paranoia/. A GUI for CD Rippers and MP3 Encoders To make your CD ripping and MP3 encoding activities easier, Red Hat Linux 9 includes the grip utility. You can fire up this GUI by selecting Main Menu | Extras | Sound & Video | grip. By default, it’s configured to use cdparanoia for extracting the audio files (as .wav files) and the lame executable for encoding the files into MP3 format. As we’ve mentioned, the lame encoder is not included by default in Red Hat Linux 9, due to its decision to not support MP3 out of the box. However, you can download the lame encoder from http://rpmfind.net/linux/freshrpms/redhat-8.0/lame, and you can get the bladeenc encoder from http://bladeenc.mp3.no. The interface of the grip utility is intuitive and fairly easy to use. The main screen is shown below: More information can be found at the Grip’s web site at http://nostatic.org/grip/. Recording Files onto CD The cdrecord utility is a command line utility for recording files onto writable CDs using an appropriate CD-Writer drive (CD-R or CD/RW). It is installed by default in Red Hat Linux 9, and its web site can be found at http://www.fokus.gmd.de/research/cc/glone/employees/joerg.schilling/private/cdrecord.html. 152

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Audio Applications Support for MP3s You’ll notice that MP3 is missing. Red Hat decided to disable MP3 support by default, in view of legal concerns surrounding patents and licensing. However, you can reinstate such features by installing the XMMS MP3 update from various Internet sites. You simply need to install the xmms-mp3 RPM, which consists of the following two files: /usr/lib/xmms/Input/libmpg123.la /usr/lib/xmms/Input/libmpg123.so Also provided is the source or SRPM from which the binary RPM was built. This is the same SRPM shipped with Red Hat Linux 9 except that it uses the unrestricted XMMS source (i.e. has MP3 support), and has been modified to create the xmms-mp3 sub package. The package can be downloaded from http://www.gurulabs.com/downloads.html. You would then install the RPM using a command line similar to the following, depending on the package name: rpm -Uvh xmms-mp3-1.2.7-13.p.i386.rpm Finally (although we won’t discuss them here), it’s worth noting that there are xmms extensions that provide a number of other features, including visualization, skins, and effect plug-ins (for simulating echo, stereo, and other effects). CD Burning and Ripping Utilities This section covers some of the utilities that Red Hat Linux provides for writing data to CDs and DVDs (a process known as burning). We’ll also cover the utilities for taking digital data from the audio tracks of a CD (known as ripping) and turning them into MP3 files (known as encoding). The MP3 files can then be stored on your hard disk and played through the XMMS application that we discussed earlier. Extracting Audio Files from CD to MP3 First, let’s consider the task of extracting audio files from CD into MP3 format. The utility of choice for this task is cdparanoia, which is installed by default within Red Hat 9. It can be run only from the command line, but it is very flexible and you can have a lot of fun learning what all the different parameters are for. To find out about all the different parameters, just type the application name at the command line: $ cdparanoia … USAGE: cdparanoia [options] [outfile] OPTIONS: -v –verbose : extra verbose operation -q –quiet : quiet operation -e –stderr-progress : force output of progress information to stderr (for wrapper scripts) … In its simplest form, the following command line will extract all the tracks on a CD and store them in separate files in the current working directory: 151

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Audio Applications Support for Various Audio and Video Formats So, the xmms application can be used to play audio CDs in the same way as Gnome-CD. The real benefits come from using the application to play other audio and video formats, such as MP3s, which may exist on media other than a CD. For example, you may keep your MP3 collection on your hard disk, in which case you may use the Play Directory feature of XMMS. Note By default Red Hat has disabled the ability for XMMS to play MP3 files; however, this capability can be reinstated and is discussed later on in this section. You can extend the capabilities of the xmms application using plug-ins, which can be enabled and configured using the Preferences dialog. To get to the Preferences dialog, right-click on the main xmms window and select Options | Preferences: You’ll notice that the dialog contains a number of tabs - these tabs allow you to configure various plug-ins and include Audio, Visualization, and General options. We’ll concentrate on Audio plug-ins and allow you to play with the others. There are a number of plug-ins already installed, and these plug-ins cover the following audio sources: Audio CD-ROMs (using libcaudio.so) .mod files (using libmikmod.so) .wav files (using libwav.so) .ogg files (using libvorbis.so) 150

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Audio Applications Playing Multimedia Files Red Hat Linux 9 ships with a copy of Xmms (version 1.2.7), which is a cross-platform multimedia player very similar to the popular WinAmp on the Windows platform. To start Xmms, you can select Main Menu | Sound & Video | Audio Player, or run xmms from the command line. Either way, you are presented with the following screen: As you will notice, the interface is small and concise, relying on separate windows to encapsulate further features that you may decide to switch on. You can access the xmms main menu by right-clicking on the title bar of the window. This provides you with a menu that allows access to the following: Play options (File, Directory, Location) Window displayed (Main Window, Playlist Editor, or Graphical Equalizer) An Options sub-menu A Playback sub-menu A Visualization sub-menu In the screenshot below, you can see the Main Window, Playlist Editor, and Graphical Equalizer all together. The application has retrieved the tracks from a CD by using the Play Directory option, and selecting /mnt/cdrom as the location. You can also see that Track 2 has been selected and is currently playing: 149
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Audio Applications cdp Text application for playing audio Cds cdparanoia Compact disc digital audio (CDDA) extraction tool (also known as a ripper) cdrecord Command line based CD recording program dvdrecord Command line based CD and DVD recording program grip Graphical CD ripper and MP3 encoder gtoaster CD Recording package for both sound and data mikmod MOD file player xawtv TV application for suitably compliant devices xmms Multimedia player We’ll deal with these two types of applications in the following two subsections. Audio Applications As well as just allowing you to play CDs, Red Hat Linux provides a load of other utilities - from creating special effects in XMMS to converting them into MP3 files and labeling them. We can’t cover all of the audio applications in the Sound and Video package group, so we’ll concentrate on the most useful and user-friendly applications, and some of which are included in other packages such as the GNOME desktop: Playing audio CDs with Gnome-CD Playing multimedia files with Xmms Burning (writing) and ripping (extracting from) music CDs with cdparanoia, grip, and other utilities Playing Audio CDs The default application for playing your audio CDs is Gnome-CD. You can run Gnome-CD by selecting Main Menu | Sound & Video | CD Player or by typing gnome-cd at the command line, but you’ll find that the application starts automatically if you put an audio CD into your CD drive. It presents you with the following screen: This will automatically extract the track list and duration from the CD. From here you can play, skip forward, skip backward, and adjust the volume, and so on, just as you would on a standard CD player. The two buttons on the left (just below the words Unknown Album in the screenshot) lead to the Track Editor and Preferences dialogs. The Preferences dialog is particularly useful, because it allows you to choose the CD player device and to control the behavior of the application when you start it and close it: 148
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Importing E-mail from other Systems You can import from any of six formats listed in the drop-down list shown in the screenshot. When you’ve selected the data file you wish to convert, move to Step 3 using the Next button, and select the Import button to begin the import process. Note You cannot use this technique when importing information from Microsoft Outlook or Outlook Express version 4 (or later). However, you can convert these files into the standard mbox format that is supported by the above method (you can perform this conversion using another mail application such as Mozilla Mail). Alternatively you can use the Outport Tool. For more information, see http://outport.sourceforge.net and http://support.ximian.com/cgi-bin/ximian.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=59. Connecting to a Microsoft Exchange Mail Server Connecting your Evolution client to a Microsoft Exchange server is fairly simple, as long as you have purchased the Ximian Connector for Microsoft Exchange. Instructions for setting up accounts using this feature can be found within the online documentation, or at the Ximian support desk (try http://support.ximian.com/cgi-bin/ximian.cfg/php/enduser/popup_adp.php?p_faqid=148). Further information on the Ximian Connector can be found at http://www.ximian.com/products/connector, which describes in more detail the features within the product and the costs associated with it. Multimedia Applications The category of multimedia applications encompasses a wide variety of applications from playing CDs, to creating your own music library using MP3 files, to creating your own videos! This section covers some of these applications that tackle audio or graphical file formats. Red Hat Linux 9 ships with no less than 19 packages packed full of multimedia applications. You’ll find these packages in the Sound and Video package group (under the Applications category) in the RPM. Aside from the three standard package groups, there are 11 other package groups installed by default - these applications cover a variety of audio and graphical functionality: Package Group Description cdda2wav Utility for copying . wav files from audio Cds cdlabelgen CD case designer 147
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Importing E-mail from other Systems RHL9 Authors. This entry has a table icon to the right of it, to indicate that it’s a distribution list; it contains a list of the entries for the other authors. To add a contact, you can use the New | Contact button or the File | New | Contact menu option. When you do so, you get a dialog box in which to enter your information: Creating distribution lists is equally simple - you use the New | Contact List button or the File | New | Contact List menu option to bring up the dialog, supply a name, and then use your mouse to drag-and-drop contacts into the list. To the right of the window you’ll notice a list of shortcut buttons. Each button acts as a filter on the contacts. So if I selected the W button, only those contacts beginning with W would be shown - in this case only Simon Whiting and Wrox Press. Importing E-mail from other Systems If you are familiar with Microsoft Outlook (or Outlook Express), then you will find Evolution very familiar and comfortable. In fact, you can use Evolution either to import data from a recognized format in the form of a data file or to connect to an e-mail account already held on Microsoft Exchange such as one within your corporate environment or even at home. Importing from Outlook and Other Formats The File | Import option from the menu starts the Evolution Importer Assistant. Step 1 of the assistant invites you to indicate whether you want to import from an older program, or from a file. If you’re importing from a file, Step looks like this: 146
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Using Evolution The Tasks Feature The Tasks screen is a simple but effective list of jobs. To enter a task, you can use the New | Task button or the Click to add a task textbox. If you want, you can also assign a Due Date, and when the task is complete, you can mark it as finished. The screen below shows an example of the Tasks screen with some tasks entered to show you some of the features described: You can see three tasks in this screenshot. I cleaned the car last Friday, and afterwards I marked the task as complete by clicking the checkbox next to that task. We’re having a dinner party tomorrow (Tuesday), so I have to buy some food - the application is showing that task in bold because I have to buy that food today! The final task shows that I have until February 26 to submit this chapter to the Publisher. Note Remember that these tasks can also be displayed on your Summary screen to act as a reminder for you. The Contacts Feature The Contacts screen acts as an address book. The screen presents columnar list of contacts that exist within your address book. The screen below shows the contact screen with just a few contacts already entered: You can see here that I have added a few contacts. I’ve added contact entries for all the coauthors of this book, and for two companies (Wrox Press and Red Hat). I’ve also added a distribution list, which I’ve called Beg 145

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Using Evolution As you can see, the folder bar makes it much easier to find your way around your local mail folders. In addition, you can use the folder bar to manage your folders - creating, deleting, moving, copying, renaming folders and so on. For example, to create a new subfolder you simply select the parent folder in the folder bar and either select File | New | Folder or right-click and select Create New Folder. Evolution also provides the usual search facilities, which are very similar to those in Microsoft’s Outlook. You can apply search criteria against fields held in e-mails, such as the subject or body. The Calendar Feature The Calendar function provides you with a view that represents a certain time period. It can display a single day, a week (including or excluding weekends), or a month. You can change this setting via the View | Current View menu item. The example below shows the Working Week view: It is within these views that you can create Appointments that holds information such as Summary, Location, Start Date/Time, Classification, and so on. You can even add a Reminder to your appointment, and you can create recurring reminders over a period of days, weeks, months, or years. In the screenshot above you can see that I had a couple of appointments, including a visit to the dentist (oh joy!) and a meeting with the publisher… 144

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