NoiseBox    Customised Desktop sound effects

by Alan Bonsor & Nathan Micholey


NoiseBox is the program to liven up your computer by making various sound effects when certain operations are carried out. Many of these are Desktop operations, though some are active outside the Desktop. You can load NoiseBox by clicking on the icon above or double-clicking on its icon in a directory display.

Once it is loaded, an icon will appear on the icon bar and various actions will generate sounds. These can be customised as follows: Click on the icon to open a window showing various 'directories' of events. This window operates in the same way as a conventional directory display. A menu allows you to Select all of the directories or clear the selection. The selected directories can be opened from the menu or by double-clicking on them. Each directory contains a set of related events, which can each be edited by double-clicking on them to open an editing window. In the editing window is a load target indicated by a down-pointing arrow. A sound sample file can be dragged to this arrow. Doing this will enable the effect, so that whenever the described event occurs, that sound effect will be heard. The Try button can also be used to test the sound effect. If the pitch is incorrect, it can be altered by adjusting the decimal number in the Pitch field. The effect can be switched on or off by clicking on the Enable effect icon. The event directory displays all have menus allowing you to select events and enable or disable the selected group.

Once you have set the events up to your liking, open the icon bar menu and select Save Choices. This will ensure that the events will be set up again when you next load the program. The two menu options Boot enable and Boot disable allow you to set whether the effects are enabled when the NoiseBox application is first seen by the Filer. When Boot is enabled, the effects will be enabled when NoiseBox is first seen, though the full NoiseBox program will not be loaded - it can be loaded in the normal way still by double-clicking on it.

The best sound sample files to use with NoiseBox are Digital Symphony samples or raw logarithmic data (not law). Some other sample files may be usable, but many sample editors will be able to save the correct raw format. The supplied effects are from Oregon's Digital Symphony package. They can be accessed by holding down Shift and double-clicking on the !NoiseBox icon. A directory display will open in which there is a directory called Effects. Double-click on this to see the samples. The number of samples is limited due to the amount of space on the disc. Note that samples from Digital Symphony must have been saved in uncompressed format. NoiseBox is set up on the disc with these sound effects enabled, but with Boot disabled, so you will have to run NoiseBox to set them going. It is best to copy NoiseBox to another disc before saving the choices or the Boot option.

EVENTS
The following list describes the events and the circumstances in which they occur. 

Space pressed
Return pressed
Other key pressed
These are activated by the relevant key presses. Return means both the Return key and the Enter key. Other keys are all keyboard keys and mouse buttons.

Window moving
This occurs whenever a window is moved across the screen, resized or scrolled.

Window closing
Occurs when a window closes.

Iconise window
When you iconise a window on the pinboard this event will occur.

File double-click
Occurs when a file, directory or application is double-clicked on.

Deleting a file or directory
Renaming a file or directory
Creating a directory
Creating a file
Occur with the relevant filing system events.

Media not present
Occurs when the computer is looking for a disc that is not present in one of its drives.

Media not known
Occurs when the computer is asked to read or write to a disc which it has not seen.

Media search ended
Occurs when an absent disc is placed in one of the computer's disc drives.

Disc not formatted
Occurs when a disc is accessed, but is of an unrecognised format. It is possible that software which recognises the disc is also present in the machine but is not able to identify the disc before NoiseBox gives this error.

Drag finishing
Occurs when, after dragging an object around the Desktop, you let go of it.

Menu selection
Occurs when you select an item from a pop-up menu.

Task quitting
Task starting
These events occur when a Desktop task starts or quits. Some Desktop tasks are not obvious; for example, pressing F12 while in the Desktop will start a task.

Application save
Application load
These events occur when a Desktop application loads or saves data to a file at the user's request. Occasionally files will be saved without the user's intervention, this will not trigger the event. Also, clicking on OK or pressing Return in a save box will not cause the event, though dragging the file to a directory display will.

Desktop save
Occurs when you save the Desktop Boot file.

Palette change
Occurs when you use the Palette utility to change the palette, or when another program changes the palette.

New Printer driver
Occurs when the Printer Manager is loaded or quit, or when the selected printer is changed or modified in some way.

Fonts changed
Occurs when fonts are added to or removed from the list of those recognised by the machine.

Mode change
Occurs when you change screen mode in or out of the Desktop.

Screen blanked
Screen restored
These events occur when the RISC OS 3 screen blanker module blanks or restores the screen. They may not be triggered by other screen blanking programs.

Error
This can be an error generated by the Wimp or at the command line.

Help
Occurs when the *Help command is used.

Notify
Occurs as a result of an Econet Notify being sent by another machine on the network. Requires Econet to work.

Note that many events can occur when the user is not expecting them. Tasks can often start and quit without user intervention, so occasionally you may hear sound effects when you are not expecting them.


 Copyright RISC User 1994
