Ice Sound Manager 0.57 review

Ice Sound Manager was designed to ease the management of sound events, sound themes, and the IceSound server in the IceWM environment

License: GPL (GNU General Public License) File size: 0K Developer: PhrozenSmoke

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Ice Sound Manager was designed to ease the management of sound events, sound themes, and the IceSound server in the IceWM environment under Linux/Unix. It is also intended to be an improvement upon the noble, but primitive 'icesndcfg'.

The main improvements over icesndcfg include a support for sound event "themes", more comprehensive help, easy management and configuration of the IceSound server, a cleaner GUI interface, automatic starting of the IceSound server, and a more conservative approach to disk space usage. In addition, Ice Sound Manager includes a built-in "Setup" program which runs the first time you run Ice Sound Manager.

The application is written in Python (making it more easily ported across various platforms and architectures) and uses GTK through the PyGTK libraries. This application is available in both .tar.bz2, RPM, and static binary (for people without Python/PyGtk).

Please note that the tar.gz file does NOT need to be compiled (this is python, remember). System requirements are as follows: Python 2.2, PyGTK-2 1.9.9/2.0.0, IceWM (or IceWM-Gnome) 1.2.0 or better - with the IceSound Server executable (generally called, 'icesound' or icesound-gnome'). IceWM version 1.2.6 or better is highly recommended.

NONE of the following is required: Gnome, Gnome libs, or PyGnome (python-gnome). This application has NOT been tested with earlier versions of Python, IceWM, PyGTK, and IceSound Server. I can't say that it won't work with earlier versions, but I certainly can't say that it will. This application has NO dependencies on Gnome. 8-)

This software is distributed under the GPL license (included in the documentation and source code): It's free and open source for all legal and NON-commerical use, copying, modification, and redistribution, provided all of the author's credits are left in-tact and unmodified. This software is distributed AS-IS, with no warranty whatsoever. Copyright (c) 2002-2004 Erica Andrews (PhrozenSmoke[at]yahoo.com). All rights reserved.

Ice Sound Manager has been designed and tested in the following environment(s): Mandrake 8.1, SuSe 8.1, Kernel 2.4.8 / 2.4.19, Glibc 2.2.4 / 2.2.5, XFree86 4.0.1 - 4.3.0, Python 2.2 - 2.2.1, PyGtk 0.6.9/PyGtk-2 2.0.0, Gtk version 1.2.8-4-1.2.10, Gtk+2 version 2.0.6, IceWM 1.0.9 - 1.2.15, IceWM-Gnome 1.0.9 / 1.2.2, with both 'icesound' and 'icesound-gnome' sound server executables. The test computers (3) were all Pentium 1, ranging in memory from 64MB to 256MB - nothing spectacular. It should run well on very old computers.

Requierments:
Access to a Bash shell (very important), Python (2.2 or better), PyGtk-2 (1.9.9/2.0.0 or better), and Gtk+ 2.0.6 or better - neither Gnome nor PyGnome is required. (IceWMCP versions 2.5 and earlier require Gtk+1 and PyGtk-1 0.6.9) Repeat: IceWM requires NOTHING gnome-related.
Also, your version of PyGtk should have the Gdk-Pixbuf modules on your system. Please run ALL IceWMCP programs from a BASH shell: Using other shells such as ksh, pdksh, csh, tcsh, etc. is likely to cause problems. If your IceWMCP programs have trouble launching other applications, it is most likely because you are using something other than a Bash (/bin/bash) shell. Run the programs from Bash...period! If you attempt to run the application and get ANY kind of error that says something like "Import Error", it means YOU do not have all the necessary Python libraries installed or do not have them installed correctly: This is NOT a bug, so do not file a bug report when you don't have the necessary software properly installed. Getting Python and PyGtk and getting them setup right is YOUR business. DO NOT ask for help installing Python, PyGtk, or GdkPixbuf. I recommend you get them from: http://speakeasy.rpmfind.net. If you are using a Python version lower than 2.2 and are too lazy to upgrade, use the "binary" distribution of IceWM Control Panel, or don't bother at all. NOTE: These requirements apply only to the standard pure-python version of IceWM Control Panel. Compiled, binary copies of IceWM Control Panel are stand-alone executables that do NOT require Python or PyGtk.

Disk space requirements: The standard, pure-Python version of IceWM Control Panel uses approximately 1.75-2.2 MB of disk space - very small! The compiled, binary version of IceWM Control Panel uses about 3.7 MB of disk space. Yes, the binary version is large, so people too lazy or impatient to install Python and PyGtk properly and choose to use the stand-alone binary version will pay with disk space. At last check, the 'Hardware' (or 'System') plug-in uses about 1.9 MB of disk space (most of it being the hardware ID data file).