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 XHIPPO(1)                       Version 3.3                       XHIPPO(1)
 Audio Software                                               Audio Software

                              29th January 2003



 NAME
      xhippo - A GTK-based playlist manager for various UNIX sound players.

 SYNOPSIS
      xhippo [options] [dir | file ...]

 INTRODUCTION
      GNU `xhippo' is a generic playlist manager program for a variety of
      UNIX sound players. It's been shown to work with `mpg123', `madplay',
      `bplay', `s3mod', `tracker', `xmp', `mtvp', `splay', `ogg123' and
      `timidity', and should work with more-or-less anything that can take a
      filename on the command line. It is capable of automatically deciding
      which player to use depending on a file's extension; the defaults are
      set in a config file. It uses textual playlist files, which are easily
      generated with the `find' or `locate' utilities. The interface of
      `xhippo' is very loosely modelled on the shareware `HippoPlayer'
      player for the Amiga.

      `xhippo' was developed under GNU/Linux, but it contains nothing
      Linux-specific, so it will probably work on any UNIX-like system where
      gcc, glib and GTK are available. (Additionally, it supports GNU long
      options where getopt_long is available.)  If you're using NetBSD or
      FreeBSD, a port is available---see See Installation.  `xhippo' can be
      compiled as a GNOME 1 application, and it can be compiled against GTK+
      1.2, 2.0 or 2.2. `xhippo' supports standard drag-and-drop (which works
      with the GNOME, KDE and ROX file managers, and any other supporting
      the standard protocol).

      `xhippo' comes with NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.  You
      may redistribute copies of GNU `xhippo' under the terms of the GNU
      General Public License. For more information about these matters, see
      the file named COPYING.

      If you've installed a previous version of `xhippo', read the ChangeLog
      for information on what's changed recently.

      If you are using `fvwm2', you may like to read README.fvwm2.  `xhippo'
      uses GNU gettext for internationalisation; you can pick the language
      you want by setting your LANG environment variable.  If your C
      library's gettext support doesn't work, you can give the --with-
      included-gettext option to the configure script to make it use the
      copy of gettext included in the package.

      If you've downloaded `xhippo', please send me some mail to tell me
      what you think of it.  Suggestions for improvements will be gratefully
      received.

 INSTALLATION
      Before reading this section, if you're using NetBSD, FreeBSD or



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 Audio Software                                               Audio Software

                              29th January 2003



      OpenBSD, there's an easier way of doing this, as an `xhippo' port is
      standard. Simply

      cd /usr/ports/audio/xhippo
      make install

      and `xhippo' will automatically be downloaded and built for you.
      (However, this may not use the latest version, so you may want to
      consider installing it from the source yourself, in which case you
      should follow the instructions below.)

      `xhippo' uses `GTK+', and requires `GTK+ 1.2' or higher; it needs
      `gtk-config' in your path in order to build. It uses GNU `automake'
      and `autoconf', so it will automatically detect some features of your
      system that can affect `xhippo''s performance. If you have `libid3tag'
      from the `libmad' package installed (available along with the
      `madplay' MPEG audio player, which works well with `xhippo', from
      http://mad.sourceforge.net/), `xhippo' will use it to read ID3 tags.
      (If you don't have it installed, `xhippo' will use its own simple
      implementation which only understands ID3v1; `xhippo' can also use
      older versions of `libid3', but this is discouraged.)

      To compile, change to the source directory and do

      ./configure
      make

      If you want (minimal) GNOME 1 support, do ./configure --with-gnome
      instead of ./configure. If you wish to use `GTK+ 2.0' or higher, do
      ./configure --with-gtk2.  If you encounter problems finding GTK while
      building, do ./configure --help to find out how to specify where GTK
      files are stored.  If you want to install into a different place, do
      ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/xhippo or wherever.  Several other
      options are available; try ./configure --help for more information.

      To install the program, do

      make install

      The archive includes xhippo.xpm; this is a small transparent xpm image
      that's suitable for use as an icon in your window manager.  It's taken
      from the `HippoPlayer' NewIcon on the Amiga. I'll try to find a better
      xpm; I don't like this one very much. It's not installed anywhere, so
      you should probably copy it in to /usr/local/share/pixmaps/ or
      wherever your window manager looks for icons.

      Each user who wants to use `xhippo' should create a .xhippo directory
      in their home directory.  `xhippo' will look for the config and gtkrc
      files there, and will save its window state into the winstate file



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 Audio Software                                               Audio Software

                              29th January 2003



      there if configured to. Playlists should be kept in a
      .xhippo/playlists/ directory.

      `xhippo' finds your home directory by looking for the HOME environment
      variable. If this is not set by default, you should add a line of the
      form

      export HOME=`pwd`

      or your shell's equivalent to your profile script.

 INVOCATION
         To use `xhippo', you need to give it at least one playlist. You can
      either load a playlist by specifying it on the command line or in the
      config file, or you can build a playlist by dropping files from a file
      manager into the `xhippo' window or using the "Add Song" option on the
      popup menu.

         Playlists are files containing names of files to play, one per
      line.  This is compatible with XMMS's playlist format, so if you have
      an XMMS playlist called Nice, you could do xhippo $HOME/.x11amp/Nice
      to use it. (GQmpeg can also import `xhippo' playlists.)  Alternately,
      you can generate them with the `find' command; for instance, if you
      keep your .ogg files in your $HOME/sound directory, you could do

      find $HOME/sound -name *.ogg | sort >$HOME/.xhippo/playlists/ogg
      xhippo $HOME/.xhippo/playlists/ogg

      to make a playlist and play it. (With a little trickery, `xhippo' can
      be persuaded to automatically build playlists from a directory on
      startup; see the example config file for more information.)

      Playlists can also include other playlists by name; to do this, put a
      line of the form

      !foo

      in the playlist.  `xhippo' will then try to load the file foo as a
      playlist, inserting its entries into the list at that point. If the -i
      command-line option or readid3 config-file option are enabled,
      `xhippo' will try to find ID3 tags in the listed files and will put
      them in the list rather than the filenames if found.

      To start playing automatically once a playlist is loaded, use the -a
      option anywhere on the command line (or the autostart command in the
      config file).

      You can specify multiple playlists on the command line.
      Alternatively, you can specify the -f option to make `xhippo' treat



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 Audio Software                                               Audio Software

                              29th January 2003



      command-line arguments as files to be added to the playlist rather
      than playlists to load (for instance, xhippo -f *.ogg), or -D to make
      `xhippo' treat command-line arguments as directories to be searched
      for playable files.

      xhippo -h or xhippo --help will give you some simple help
      instructions.

 GUI
      The status line shows a little information about the player; it shows
      the number of playlist entries upon startup, and what player is being
      used to play the current song (and the PID of the player process, if
      you use -p or showpid:1 in the config file). To start a song, click on
      it in the list, or click "Next" to pick either a random song (see the
      mustplayall config file option below to find out how to control this),
      or the next song in the playlist, depending on the setting of the
      "Random" checkbox. Clicking on "Prev" will play the previous song (if
      the "Random" checkbox is enabled, the last random song picked). To
      restart the current song from the beginning, click "Restart". To stop,
      click "Stop".

      `xhippo' supports a number of keyboard accelerators: `r' for Restart,
      `s' or keypad `/' for Stop, `p' or keypad `+' for Pause, `n', keypad
      `*' or keypad `-' for Next, `b' for Prev, ``' for Mini, `h' for
      Random, `a' for Add File, `d' for Add Directory, `l' for Load
      Playlist, `v' for Save Playlist, `o' for Sort By Name, `w' for Sort By
      Swapped Name, `t' for Sort By Mtime, `c' for Clear Playlist, `0' to
      `9' for user-defined menu entries and `q' for quit.

      When the end of a song is reached, `xhippo' will pick either a random
      one or the next one from the list depending on whether the "Random"
      checkbox is set or not. Optionally, `xhippo' can scroll the list so
      that the randomly-picked song is at the top of the visible section; to
      enable this, use the -s command-line option, or the scroll:1 config-
      file option below. To quit, use your window manager's close button,
      pick Quit from the popup menu or send `xhippo' a `SIGINT' `Ctrl-C'.

      If you check the "Mini" checkbox, the list of files will disappear,
      making the window smaller; unchecking it will make it reappear. You
      can make `xhippo' start up in this "minified" state by using the -t
      switch or the startmini:1 option in your config file.

      You can drop `file:' URLs (such as files from `gmc' or `xftree') onto
      the `xhippo' window to add songs to the playlist (if you drop a
      directory, it will search the directory for files to add). Other URLs
      (such as `http:') are not supported, as there's no simple mechanism
      that all players understand to stream a file from a network
      connection.




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 XHIPPO(1)                       Version 3.3                       XHIPPO(1)
 Audio Software                                               Audio Software

                              29th January 2003



      Right-clicking on the playlist or the status bar will bring up a popup
      menu, which allows you to bring up an information window for a song
      showing the song's size, location and the date it was last modified,
      move songs up and down within the playlist, remove songs from the
      playlist, add songs or directories to the playlist, sort the playlist
      by song name, swapped song name (the part after the first - in the
      name) or song mtime, load and save playlists, or bring up the
      preferences dialog. The default directory for loading and saving
      playlists is $HOME/.xhippo/playlists. Left-clicking on the status bar
      will bring up the information window for the song that is currently
      playing.

      If you use the -w switch or the savewinstate config file option,
      `xhippo' will save its window position and size to your
      $HOME/.xhippo/winstate file when you close the window, and will reload
      it on startup.

 CONFIG FILE
      `xhippo' searches for its config file as /usr/local/etc/xhippo.config
      (or wherever you specified with the --prefix option to `configure'),
      $HOME/.xhippo/config and xhippo.config (in the current directory); all
      that are present will be read.

      Most config-file options have a command-line equivalent; these support
      both traditional (-x) and GNU-style long (--extended) options.  The
      long options have the same name as the config-file options; --option
      is equivalent to option:1 in the config file (i.e. it forces the
      option on). The command-line options override the config file. Invoke
      `xhippo' as xhippo --help for more information.

      Many config-file options are alterable from within the GUI at runtime
      through the Preferences dialog, which can be brought up from the
      context menu.

      A config file line starting with a # will be ignored.

      Lines have the format command:arg1:arg2.... Arguments can be of
      several types: booleans, integers, strings and sort types. Booleans
      represent on/off conditions; yes, on, true or any non-zero integer
      will enable the attribute, and any other value will disable it.  For
      sort types, none (or any other unrecognised value) means don't sort,
      name (or, for backwards compatibility, any non-zero numeric value)
      means sort by name, swapped means sort by swapped name, mtime means
      sort by mtime.

      The following configuration commands are accepted:

      `type:extension:command[:options]'
           When `xhippo' encounters a file whose name ends in .extension, it
           will .ev1 .}E .if0 'sp |2640u-1v-1p .if0 'sp |2640u-3v .ifn 'sp






           |2640u-4v .tl- % -Formatted:  March 28, 2024 .ev1 .}C .}E .ie0
           'sp 2v .el'sp 3v .ps0-1 .bd1 3 .tlXHIPPO(1)Version 3.3XHIPPO(1)
           .if!Audio Software .sp .3v .tlAudio SoftwareAudio Software
           .if!29th January 2003 .sp .3v .tl29th January 2003 .if29th
           January 2003 .sp 1.3v .bd1 .ps0 .ie0 'sp 1.5v .el'sp 3v .ev .ns
           .ev use command file to play it. The extension is case-
           insensitive. options is optional and controls how the player will
           be started by `xhippo'; if it contains g then the player will be
           started in its own process group (necessary to properly kill some
           multithreaded players); if it contains i then the player will be
           started with stdin connected to `/dev/null'. Examples:
           type:mp3:mpg123 -b 1024, type:ogg:ogg123:i

           About the only requirement that `xhippo' has on the players that
           it uses is that they must quit cleanly when sent a `SIGTERM', and
           be pausable with `SIGSTOP' and `SIGCONT'. Some versions of the
           multithreaded `ogg123' have the problem that, when sent a
           `SIGTERM', the main thread exits immediately but the audio device
           isn't closed until the buffer is empty (which could be up to a
           couple of seconds later). This means that `xhippo' thinks the
           player has exited before the audio device is available again.
           This is merely annoying if your operating system and hardware
           permits the audio device to be opened by multiple processes at
           once, but if it doesn't, then when a song finishes xhippo will
           attempt to start the next and fail, and do this repeatedly until
           the audio device is available again. One solution is to use
           another Vorbis player instead of `ogg123' (such as the somewhat-
           more-heavyweight `mplayer').

      `autostart:boolean'
           If enabled, `xhippo' will play a random song on startup. This is
           equivalent to -a on the command line.

      `scroll:boolean'
           If enabled, `xhippo' will scroll the list when a random item is
           selected so that the selected song is visible. This is equivalent
           to -s on the command line.

      `mustplayall:boolean'
           If enabled, `xhippo' will always pick an item that it hasn't
           played before from the playlist when asked to pick a random
           entry. This continues until it has played all the entries, at
           which point it will just pick a random one as before. This is
           equivalent to -m on the command line.

      `readid3:boolean'
           If enabled, `xhippo' will try to read ID3 tags from the files
           listed in the playlists and will use them as the playlist entries
           if found. This slows down `xhippo' startup considerably, so it's
           disabled by default. This is equivalent to -i on the command
           line.

      `exec:command'
           command will be executed as a shell command (using /bin/sh)
           before any further config commands are parsed.  For an example of
           why I included this, look at the example config file
           (xhippo.config).

      `load:playlist'



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 Audio Software                                               Audio Software

                              29th January 2003



           playlist will be loaded as a playlist file. This is equivalent to
           including playlist on the command line.

      `savewinstate:boolean'
           If enabled, `xhippo' will save its window position, size and
           state (whether it is minified or not) between sessions in the
           $HOME/.xhippo/winstate file. If it is zero, `xhippo' will allow
           your window manager to place it, will start with a "standard"
           (small) size, and won't start minified (unless the next option is
           specified). This is equivalent to -w on the command line.

      `startmini:boolean'
           If enabled, `xhippo' will start up in the "minified" state, as if
           you'd clicked the "Mini" button (even if the winstate file says
           that the window wasn't tinified). This is equivalent to -t (for
           "tiny") on the command line.

      `showpid:boolean'
           If enabled, `xhippo' will show the PID of its player process in
           the status line when not in mini mode. This is equivalent to -p
           on the command line.

      `ordered:boolean'
           If enabled, `xhippo' will start with the "Random" checkbox turned
           off. This is equivalent to -o on the command line.

      `stripextension:boolean'
           If enabled, `xhippo' will strip the extensions from the filenames
           displayed in the playlist. This is equivalent to -S on the
           command line.

      `leftscroll:boolean'
           If enabled, `xhippo' will place the vertical scrollbar on the
           left side of the playlist.  This looks better with NeXTStep-like
           themes. This is equivalent to -l on the command line.

      `hideplayeroutput:boolean'
           If enabled, `xhippo' will redirect the output (stdout and stderr)
           of child player processes to /dev/null. This is equivalent to -q
           on the command line.

      `sortonload:sorttype'
           sorttype specifies how `xhippo' should sort playlists when they
           are loaded. -O on the command line is equivalent to
           sortonload:name.

      `playlistdir:dir'
           Use dir as the default directory for loading or saving playlists.




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 Audio Software                                               Audio Software

                              29th January 2003



      `demanglenames:boolean'
           If enabled, `xhippo' will replace _ (underscores) and %20s in
           song names with spaces on the display. This is equivalent to -d
           on the command line.

      `onetime:boolean'
           If enabled and either ordered or mustplayall are turned on,
           `xhippo' will stop when all the items in the playlist have been
           played. This is equivalent to -1 on the command line.

      `playlisttitle:boolean'
           If enabled, then `xhippo' will set the window title to include
           the name of the current playlist. This is equivalent to -T on the
           command line.

      `titlebasename:boolean'
           If enabled, then `xhippo' will use the basename of the playlist
           name when setting the window title if playlisttitle is set. This
           is equivalent to -b on the command line.

      `nocheckfiles:boolean'
           Normally, when a playlist is loaded, `xhippo' will check to see
           whether all the listed files exist and discard them if they
           don't.  If enabled, then `xhippo' won't bother checking, which
           will make startup significantly faster on large playlists. This
           is equivalent to -c on the command line.  Note that `xhippo' will
           read the information if it's needed at a later time, so if you
           sort the playlist by mtime then it'll need to scan all the files
           to get the mtimes.

      `writeplaying:boolean'
           If enabled, then `xhippo' will write the name of the song that is
           currently playing to $HOME/.xhippo/current_song. (If the file
           cannot be written, `xhippo' will silently ignore it.) This is
           equivalent to -W on the command line.

      `skippath:integer'
           Normally when displaying song names in the playlist, `xhippo'
           will use the basename of the file (i.e. it will strip off the
           path to the file). If integer is set to something other than
           zero, `xhippo' will only strip the first integer elements of the
           path; this could be useful if you sort your music collection into
           albums and want to display the album names in the playlist. This
           is equivalent to -k integer on the command line.

      `usercommand:description:command'
           Define a user command. This will add an entry titled description
           to the context menu (and assign it a numerical accelerator
           starting from `0'); when the entry is picked, command will be run



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 Audio Software                                               Audio Software

                              29th January 2003



           (with a single instance of %s in the command replaced by the full
           filename of the selected song, or the empty string if the menu is
           invoked while not over a song).

      `commandlinesongs:boolean'
           If enabled, `xhippo' will treat command-line arguments as songs
           to add to the playlist rather than playlists to load. This is
           equivalent to -f on the command line; you can therefore do
           something like xhippo -f *.ogg to start `xhippo' listing all the
           `.ogg' files in the current directory.

      `commandlinedirs:boolean'
           If enabled, `xhippo' will treat command-line arguments as
           directories to search for songs to add to the playlist.  This is
           equivalent to -D on the command line.

      `deletewhenplayed:boolean'
           If enabled, `xhippo' will remove songs from the playlist once
           they have been played. This is equivalent to -x on the command
           line.

      `persistplaylist:boolean'
           If enabled, `xhippo' will attempt to load a playlist from
           $HOME/.xhippo/saved_playlist on startup (if no other files are
           given on the command line), and will save the current playlist to
           that file on exit. This is equivalent to -P on the command line.

      `commandlineguess:boolean'
           If enabled, `xhippo' will attempt to guess what the command-line
           arguments are. If they have a known extension (one specified with
           type above) then they are assumed to be songs; if they are
           directories they are assumed to be directories; otherwise they
           are assumed to be playlists. You probably want this turned on
           unless you're in the habit of calling your playlist playlist.ogg.
           This is equivalent to -g on the command line.

      `persistfrequently:boolean'
           If enabled and persistplaylist is also enabled, `xhippo' will
           save the current playlist whenever a new song is started. You may
           want this if you're in the habit of killing xhippo randomly.

 GTKRC
      To allow for customised GTK appearances, `xhippo' reads a standard
      gtkrc file in $HOME/.xhippo/gtkrc. An example gtkrc is included as
      xhippo.gtkrc. For more information about gtkrc files, consult the GTK
      documentation.

 DISTRIBUTION
      If you want an archive to give to somebody else, invoke make dist in



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                              29th January 2003



      the `xhippo' source directory. This will produce the same xhippo-
      VERSION.tar.gz file that I distribute. If you wish to mail me a
      modified version, do exactly the same (after removing the doc
      directory); I can then `diff' it against my last release to see what
      you've changed. (Alternately, just send me a diff -Naur between a
      clean distributed `xhippo' and your modified version.)

 CONTACT
      `xhippo' is far from perfect. Please contact <bug-xhippo@gnu.org> if
      you discover any bugs, or have any suggestions.

      `xhippo' was written by me, Adam Sampson, <azz@gnu.org>.  My other
      software can always be found at http://azz.us-lot.org/; `xhippo' is
      now a GNU (http://www.gnu.org/) application and is distributed from
      ftp://ftp.gnu.org/ or from mirror sites.

      The original German translation was done by Volker Assmann,
      <volka@bigfoot.de>, who was also responsible for betatesting.

      Hubert Feyrer first alerted me to the problems with GTK+-1.0 and 1.1
      compatibility, and also maintains the NetBSD package at

      ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/packages/pkgsrc/audio/xhippo/README.html
      (or /usr/ports/audio/xhippo on your NetBSD system).

      Rod Taylor maintains the FreeBSD port (in /usr/ports/audio/xhippo on
      FreeBSD 3.2 and up).

      Kevin Lo maintains the OpenBSD port at

      http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb/ports/audio/xhippo/ Craig
      Knudsen provided a routine to read ID3 tags.

      Joseph Turian suggested the idea of file inclusion in playlists.

      Jeff Covey supplied a Perl script which provided the functionality of
      the current "Load" button, which encouraged me build the feature in.

      Kevin Everets implemented the Pause button, the leftscroll option,
      translated the documentation to texinfo and provided patches for or
      suggested various other features.

      Several other people who contributed are credited in the ChangeLog
      file and the contrib/README file.

 AUTHOR
      Adam Sampson <azz@gnu.org> and others; see the section ChangeLog for
      details.




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                              29th January 2003



 SEE ALSO
      mpg123(1), ogg123(1), bplay(1), xmp(1), mtvp(5), s3mod(5), tracker(5),
      madplay(5)

















































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