daisy-player(1)

📦
version 13.0 · 5 versions
, in debian bookworm, ubuntu jammy

✨ daisy-player — the glow-up ✨

okay bestie, so this is the daisy-player(1) page from the Linux Reference Manual and honestly? it's a whole vibe. it's a player for DAISY Digital Talking Books and Audio-CDs, and i'm about to walk you through every single bit of it. no skips, no shortcuts, we're doing the full read 💖

🌸 NAME 🌸

daisy-player — a player for DAISY Digital Talking Books or Audio-CD's. periodt.

💅 SYNOPSIS 💅

daisy-player [directory_with_a_Daisy-structure |
Daisy_book_archive] [-c cdrom_device] [-d audio_device:audio_type] [-h]
[-i] [-T] [-n | -y] [-v]

look at her. iconic. she takes a directory or an archive, plus a lil pile of flags. we'll get to every one, i promise 🫶

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

so, daisy-player reads a Daisy-CD and plays the audio-files, fr fr. right now it supports DAISY versions 2.02 and 3, and also media with multiple books — that's the discinfo situation, iykyk.

she can also play Audio-CD's, and when she does she tries to get CD-information from a cddb-database. the way she just knows 💅

a list of items on the Daisy-CD or Audio-CD will pop up on your screen. press <ENTER> to start playing. and here's the cute part: when the reading of an item is finished, daisy-player will play the next item, and the cursor will automatically skip to that item — so if you've got a braille-terminal attached, it'll display the name of that item for you. main character accessibility energy, we love to see it 👑

🎀 OPTIONS 🎀

  • directory_with_a_Daisy-structure — you can just hand daisy-player a directory with a daisy structure as the argument. easy.
  • Daisy_book_archive — or you can hand her an archive with a daisy structure instead. tons of archive-formats are supported, like .tar.gz or .zip. the archive gets unpacked using the unar-utility. lowkey magical ✨
  • -c cdrom_device — use DEVICE as the CD device. DEVICE is the device special file name of the CD-ROM device. the default is /dev/sr0. and heads up bestie: be sure the user is a member of the group cdrom.
  • -d audio_device:audio_type — daisy-player will play on this sound device, of the given audio_type. the value must be of the form audio_device:audio_type. examples: -d default:alsa, hw:0:alsa or 0:pulseaudio. this option overrules the value in the ~/.daisy-player.xml config file. and again, be sure the user is a member of the group "audio".
  • -h — display this help and exit. short and sweet.
  • -i — ignore reading of the bookmarks. not today, bookmarks.
  • -T — do not display the time passing during playback. no clock anxiety, slay.
  • -n — don't fetch cddb-information of an Audio-CD from the internet.
  • -y — fetch cddb-information of an Audio-CD from the internet.
  • -v — be more verbose, so one can se what's going on while initializing. (yes, that's how it's spelled in the original, i'm just the messenger 🙈)

🌈 SCREEN 🌈

the name and version of this program and the name of the author will be displayed left aligned at the top of the screen. the name of the current loaded book will be displayed right aligned. balanced. as all things should be.

the second row of the screen will display:

  • the number of pages of the current loaded book (if any)
  • the current selected level and the total number of levels
  • the total playing time
  • the current displayed screen and the total number of screens

the next rows will display the title of the item, the first page of that item within brackets (if there are pages), and the playing time. items in higher levels will be indented — three spaces for each level. and when "just playing this item" is active, a "J" will be viewed at the first column of that item. cute lil marker 🎀

⭐ CONTROL KEYS ⭐

daisy-player recognizes the following keyboard-commands, and there are a LOT of them, so buckle up:

  • cursor down, 2 — move cursor to the next item
  • cursor up, 8 — move cursor to the previous item
  • cursor right, 6 — skip 10 seconds forwards
  • cursor left, 4 — skip 10 seconds backwards
  • page-down, 3 — view next screen
  • page-up, 9 — view previous screen
  • enter — start playing
  • space, 0 — pause/resume playing
  • home, * — play on normal speed
  • / — search for a label
  • d — store current item to disk. (take into account the selected level)
  • D, - — decrease playing speed
  • e, . — stop playing and eject
  • f — find the currently playing item and place the cursor there
  • g — go to time in this item or song (MM:SS)
  • G (DAISY-CD) — go to page number (if any)
  • h, ? — give this help
  • j, 5 — just play current item and place a "J" at the first column.
  • l — switch to next level
  • L — switch to previous level
  • m — mute sound on/off
  • n — search forewards
  • N — search backwards
  • o — select next output sound device. the volume levels and the "mute" states of all cards ar shown and can be altered
  • p — place a bookmark
  • q — quit daisy-player. the playing-point will be saved as bookmark.
  • s — stop playing
  • T — display the time passing during playback on/off
  • U, + — increase playing speed
  • v, 1 — decrease playback volume
  • V, 7 — increase playback volume (beware of Clipping)

💜 NOTES 💜

when playing an Audio-CD, skip-left and skip-right react a little late. the same goes for commands like 'U', 'D' and HOME. not her fault, she's doing her best 😭

a DAISY 2.02-medium normally contains a single book. but if more than one DAISY book is provided on the same medium, each book is stored in a separate folder (directory) of its own. in the root of the CD, DVD, or other media, a file called discinfo.html is created that contains links to all books on the medium. (see https://daisy.org/activities/standards/daisy/daisy-2/daisy-format-2-0-specification/)

a DAISY 3-book has two index-files for navigation — a NCX and an OPF file. daisy-player tries to detemine which of these two files give the best result. but sometimes daisy-playr is not able to make the best choice. when in doubt, use option "--N" to force the use of NCX or "-O" to force the OPF. this is only for DAISY format 3 books. iykyk 🫶

ngl bestie, those --N and -O options show up in the notes but not in the options list above — that's just how the original page is, so i'm telling you exactly like it is. no cap.

🔥 THANKS TO 🔥

shoutout time, because none of this happens alone:

  • Daniel Veillard <daniel@veillard.com> — for the XML2 library.
  • Robert Leslie <rob@mars.org> — for the MPEG audio decoder (madplay).
  • Chris Bagwell <cbagwell@users.sourceforge.net>
  • Rob Sykes <aquegg@yahoo.co.uk> — for the sox library.
  • Kim Nilsson <kim.nilsson@no-substitute.com>
  • Lennart Poettering — for pulseaudio.
  • Colomban Wendling <cwendling@hypra.fr> — for some patches.

we stan every single one of them 💖

🍓 FILES 🍓

  • ~/.daisy-player/ — this directory contains the bookmarks in XML-format. each file has the name of the book and contains the name of the current item, the start-time of that item and the current level.
  • ~/.daisy-player.xml — this file, in XML-format, contains the current sink in the list of the available sound devices, the desired playing speed, the current cdrom-device and wether or not to fetch cddb-information.

🧚 SEE ALSO 🧚

cddbget(1), unar(1), eject(1), udisksctl(1), pulseaudio(1), pactl(1), amixer(1), alsamixer(1), usermod(8)

go read those too, they're the supporting cast 💅

👑 AUTHOR 👑

Jos Lemmens <jos@jlemmens.nl>

Copyright (C)2003-2021 Jos Lemmens <jos@jlemmens.nl>

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2, or (at your option) any later version. This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details. You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program (see the file COPYING); if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA

and that's the whole page bestie 💖 this was daisy-player(1) at version 13.0, dated 08 January 2022, straight out of the Linux Reference Manual. mwah. go play some books 📚✨

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