Haiku Look & Feel

[jstln]

Hello;
I. What is the SoundTheme in MediaServer page? Where Could we obtain one or two?
II. I found a ThemeManager in HaikuDepot but no themes. Could I found more about Haiku theme and icons?
III. How could I ninstll more fonts; also installing fonts manually? Do we need fc-cache for that? How are fonts organized inside haiku?
(confuzed)!

[un_spacyar]

Hello. For standard TrueType fonts (.ttf) you can copy manually in the following folder:

/boot/home/config/non-packaged/data/fonts

[humdinger]

@jstln

I. What is the SoundTheme in MediaServer page? Where Could we obtain one or two?[/quote]
You mean “SoundFont”, I suppose. Those are for MIDI playback, describing the sound of instruments. Haiku’s TimGM" in HaikuDepot is decent, but there are better and specialized and much larger SoundFonts available on the net.

[quote]II. I found a ThemeManager in HaikuDepot but no themes. Could I found more about Haiku theme and icons?

I guess people could share their themes. Just zip up what’s saved under ~/config/settings/UIThemes. Though that won’t include e.g. the Desktop backgrounds or Sounds, as it only saves the paths to those.

ThemeManager is currently more geared toward switching between various Appearance prefs settings (fonts/colours) you’ve created yourself.

[jstln]

I guess I thought there is a package or set of file to bring sounds to the haiku.
Like start(boot) or other actions/activities and shutdown/reboot?

[Pete]

@jstln

I guess I thought there is a package or set of file to bring sounds to the haiku.Like start(boot) or other actions/activities and shutdown/reboot?

Those are handled by the ‘Sounds’ Preference (in that Deskbar menu). You can install whatever sounds you like (wherever you like, really) and then link to them from the desired event in the Preference panel. Be aware, though, that many of the events don’t seem actually to be active, but ones like ‘Startup’ and ‘Beep’ should be. I’ve heard, though, that startup sounds just don’t work on some hardware – maybe audio takes too long to initialize?

Nobody has made any “official” sounds for Haiku, but there was a forum topic a while back suggesting there should be. A couple of people, including me, put forward some samples. But basically you can use any sound, in just about any format, that you want.

[Pete]

Heh. I was thinking about how the last thread on system sounds just fizzled out, so I did a forum search, And there was a long – and constructive – topic way back at the dawn: What about sound design?.

Several people were generating possible candidates, especially someone with the nick ‘Lexen’ who started the thread. Every link to the samples I tried to follow though is totally, unequivocally, dead. What a shame.

[jstln]

What kind of file we could use ? .mp3 .wav …?

[Pete]

@jstln

What kind of file we could use ? .mp3 .wav …?

Yes…

Also .ogg, even aiff these days (there used to be an endianness bug but that was fixed a while back). Any audio format you can play with mediaPlayer should work.

You can select any suitable sound you have on disk. Just select the event you want to signal in the Sound Preference list, and drag the file onto the filename field at the bottom – or use the “other…” item in the field’s menu to open a filepanel. Beware a slight glitch in the Preference, though: pressing the play-button right after doing the above has no effect; you have to select another event then reselect your choice, and the button becomes active.

One other point. Apps can add their own events to the list. If you have BeShare installed, for instance, you’ll see a bunch of events associated with that.