WMrack(1)

NAME 💖

okay so wmrack — it's a CD Player and Mixer dock applet. that's the whole thing. bestie it plays your CDs and mixes your audio, all in one lil dock buddy. (yes this is the WMrack(1) manual, hi, welcome, come sit with me 🌸)

SYNOPSIS ✨

wmrack [options]

DESCRIPTION 🦋

wmrack is a combined CD player + Audio Mixer, built to live in WindowMaker's dock. but like, it's not exclusive — it also plays nice with other window managers, and it can get swallowed (iconic behaviour, honestly) by a bunch of tools, like fvwm's button bar or gnome's panel.

here's what it actually does, no cap:

• it handles mounted volumes 👑
• it opens and closes the tray
• it can show the current position in various ways
• it skips data tracks too
• and it gives you access to all your mixer devices — so you can change volume or balance and set the record source 💅

OPTIONS 🎀

• -b COLSPEC or --background COLSPEC — sets the background color of the LED. it's available through the symbolic XPM colorname led_color_black. the other colors of the LED can be changed with the -l option. wanna know what colors even exist? try showrgb (part of X11).
• -d DEVICE or --device DEVICE — sets the CD-ROM device. defaults to /dev/cdrom.
• -h or --help — prints a summary of supported options and their default values. the "just tell me everything" button fr fr.
• -l COLSPEC or --ledcolor COLSPEC — sets the color of the led. heads up: it gets darkened two times (for a total of three colors) to get all the needed colors, so like... use a bright color, bestie, or it's giving nothing. for designing your own XPM, the ledcolor is made available through the symbolic xpm color names led_color_high, led_color_low, and led_color_med. there's also a symbol named led_color_back to get the default background color of the led-display. it can be changed using the -l option. wanna find out what colors are available? try showrgb (part of X11).
• -m DEVICE or --mixer DEVICE — sets the MIXER device. defaults to /dev/mixer.
• -p or --noprobe — disables the startup probing for a cd. the default is to probe the cdrom, which will close the tray and read the TOC of the cd (if there is one).
• -s STYLEFILE or --style STYLEFILE — wmrack will try to load its window-pixmaps from the specified STYLEFILE. it searches that file for XPM pixmaps named cdnodisc, cdplaying, cdpaused, cdstopped, cdled, mixer, and mixled. if some of those aren't defined, the compile-time defaults get used instead. no drama 💜
• -w or --withdrawn — starts wmrack in withdrawn window state. super useful for docking the window to WindowMaker.
• -M MODESTRING or --mode MODESTRING — by default wmrack starts up showing the CDROM controls. with this you pick what controls get shown. valid MODESTRINGs are cdrom, and mixer.

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INVOCATION 🌈

you can call wmrack a few different ways. the most common one is from your dock file:

wmrack
WMRack
POSITION 2 -1 0
wmrack
--withdrawn

another way is to swallow it into the afterstep(1) Wharf(1). best done by putting this line into your .steprc:

*Wharf WMRack nil Swallow "wmrack" wmrack &

this method also works for other button-bars, like the FvwmButtons(1) of the fvwm(1) window manager. iconic versatility honestly 🔥

GENERAL USAGE 🫶

wmrack has a simple click interface. all the buttons show a standard sign that says what action it'll do. but there are some notable extensions to that, explained below 👇

you can always change which controls are shown by clicking the middle button (that's the one showing a disc or a speaker). this button shows a symbol of the controls you can switch to by pressing it (the disc and the speaker).

if you click this button with Control-Button-3, WMrack will exit. bye bestie 😭

CDROM USAGE 💿

the default behaviour of wmrack is to try to read the cdrom at startup. if there was no cd, it will not try again unless you press the close or play button. that closes the cdrom and tries to read it again. and unless there's a cd, wmrack goes back to suspending until your next action. it's patient. it's just vibing.

• open tray — clicking an open/eject button with button-3 will always open the tray.
• skip — press the button down and hold it on one of the prev/next track buttons and the cdrom goes fast forward or backward. zoom zoom 🏎️
• time left — a button-1 click into the time display switches between time running and time left display.
• total time — a button-2 click into the time display switches between track and total time.
• repeat — a button-3 click into the time display cycles through normal mode, repeat all, and repeat one play mode. 🔁

the cd player also has play list functionality. by default it maps out all data tracks of the current cdrom, but you can also randomize the list or program it to the tracks you actually wanna hear. heads up though:

these functions are only available while a cdrom is in the drive and the drive is stopped. both. no exceptions, bestie.

• randomize — clicking Control-Button-3 to the track display randomizes the playlist. no track will repeat, the tracks are just mixed up. you'll see the short message RA:ND in the time display.
• start programming — click Control-Button-1 into the track display to start programing a new playlist. you'll see a short PR:OG message in the time display, and an M will show up in the lower left corner of the display.
• add track to list — use the prev-/next-track buttons to select a track, then click Mod1-Button-1 into the track display to add it to the playlist. the time display will show the number of the tracks in the list and the number of the selected track for a short time, and will than switch back and display the total ength of the playlist.
• clear list — to abort the programing of a playlist, click Control-Button-1 into the track-display.
• start playing the list — simply press the PLAY button. go off 👑

MIXER USAGE 🎚️

the main controls of the mixer are the two volume scales, at the left and the right side of the display. use the mouse to modify the scales.

• button-1 — change volume of clicked scale
• button-2 — change volume of both scales
• button-3 — change the balance of the volume

clicking into the alphanumeric display changes the currently shown mixer device. some of the valid devices are VOlume, BAss, TReble, SYnth, PCm, SPeaker, LIne, MIc, CD, MiXer, Pcm2, REcord, IGain, OGain, Line1, Line2, and Line3. you can also remove devices from this list.

• button-1 — go to the next device
• button-2 — go to the main volume (first device)
• button-3 — go to the previous device
• control-button-1 — show all devices
• control-button-3 — remove current device

below the change-controls button is the record source button. it shows either an 'X' and is inactive, or it shows a speaker or a recording sign and is active. by pressing this button you can change the source of your recordings.

• button-1 — toggle record source button
• button-2 — set as record source and clear all other

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COPYRIGHTS 📜

Copyright 1997, Oliver Graf <ograf@fga.de>. 2003-2006, Chris Waters Most styles copyright 1997, Heiko Wagner <hwagner@fga.de>.

No guarantees or warranties or anything are provided or implied in any way whatsoever. Use this program at your own risk. Permission to use this program for any purpose is given, as long as the copyright is kept intact. The program and its source code may be copied under the terms of the GNU General Public License. See the file "COPYING" for details.

lowkey important, bestie: use it at your own risk, keep the copyright intact, and read COPYING for the details. that's the deal 💅

AUTHORS 👑

• Oliver Graf <ograf@fga.de> -- original author
• Chris Waters <xtifr@users.sourceforge.net> -- current maintainer
• Heiko Wagner <hwagner@fga.de> -- the hyped window shapes

CREDITS 💜

• Rob Malda <malda@cs.hope.edu> -- who had written ascd and asmixer
• Michael Kurz <mkurz@rzws.fh-aalen.de> -- also for ascd and asmixer
• Thomas McWilliams <tgm@netcom.com> -- who has done Workbone

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and that's the whole manual, bestie 🎀 thanks for reading all the way down. this one's from the 3rd Berkeley Distribution, dated 1 June 1997, and yes, it's the WMrack(1) page. mwah 💖