RexxCD

By Urban Lindeskog
ProNotion SoftWare Development Group.



"Yesdisco"
History
Features and requirements
Revision history
Options
The GUI
Settings
Table Of Contents files
Compatibility
Development and support
The ARexx interface
Attributes documentation

RexxCD is WhatEverWare.

I would appreciate it if you sent me something cash, a postcard, netmail, what ever....

I give my permission to distribution of the RexxCD archive on AmiNet, the AmiNet CD's, and Fish CD's. Others may distribute the whole unaltered archive only if there is no money charged except for media cost.

The story behind RexxCD

I purchased a Toshiba 5301 QuadSpeed SCSI CD drive in June '95. I didn't have a CD player previously, so this buy was a kind of two-in-one for me: Audio and Multimedia (hahahaarfh!)

Shortly after that, I found a filesystem that sufficed, but the audio players was not flexible enough. I wanted ARexx.

Oh , well, had to make the program myself then...

To be honest, I didn't have to work that hard with it, so the hurt-puppy-look isn't necessary. I have made an ARexx parser previously. And with the help of the sources from SCSIUtil and MultiCDPlayer, the mysteries of SCSI were unveiled.

I'm rather proud of the ARexx code, it's so ...beautiful. Especially the GETATTR / SETATTR (and settings) code. So when I'm finished polishing it, I will release the source.

How I use RexxCD

I have set up a system with ir-detectors, relays and push buttons in my apartment. I have made some software that reports if I've got fidonet mail, and that can act like a burglar alarm. And now I can control the CD player too... Cyber, man!

Features, requirements

RexxCD is an ARexx Audio CD Player host.

Revision history

Version 1.3: (13/01/98)

  • Added the ACTION.NEWDISC attribute - contains the command to run when a new CD is inserted.
  • RexxCD now gets notifications when the TOC file is altered.

    RexxCD's options and tooltypes

    Template:

    Options:

    The GUI

    Settings

    The settings file defaults to "PROGDIR:RexxCD.Settings". This file is read on startup, before the "REXX:Startup_RexxCD.rexx" is executed. The settings file is in plain ASCII. It's okay to alter it manually, but try to keep the structure the same.

    Here's an example anyway:

    - Settings beyond this point are not implemented yet.

    The Table of Contents files

    Unfortunately, Audio CD's does not contain the names on titles or artists, not even the name of the CD itself.

    However, it is possible to retrieve an unique ID for every CD. RexxCD searches the "SETTINGS.TOCPATH" for a file with the name contained in the attribute "DISC.ID", or "DISC.BARCODE"

    About "DISC.BARCODE": Some discs provide the EAN barcode information (those black stripes with numbers underneath) for the disc. If RexxCD can't find the "DISC.ID" file, it tries with "DISC.BARCODE".

    The TOC file is an plain text file with the same format as the program MultiCDPlayer uses. With some extra features added, of course.

    Like this:

    On some CD's all tracks are not performed by the same artist, to solve this, write the name of the track, a backslash "\" and the name of the artist. This is a feature of RexxCD, but other programs should not bug out on it.

    Like this:

    Syncronized lyrics

    RexxCD is probably the only CD program for any computer platform with this feature. You can add the lyrics for the tracks to the end of TOC files. This is a unique feature of RexxCD, but other programs should skip this extra information.

    This is the format:

    If you want to change the text attributes, these escape sequences are available:

    NOTE:

    The \a macro is only sent if the lyrics window is open and the attribute "SETTINGS.ALLOWMACRO" is set to 1.

    Excerpt from a TOC file:

    Compatibility

    RexxCD recognizes and does some compatibility fixes for the old TOSHIBA XM drive version 1971; vendor specific string '07/16/91':

    "DRIVE.BPS" will be set to 300
    "DRIVE.STEREO" will be set to 0

    This fixes the track timer and lyrics syncronization. The volume control for this drive is global for the stereo pairs, and both controls must be set to the same value.

    ___

    The 6 spin ACER CD-767E/O version 1.5 ATAPI drive does not function with RexxCD, you can only eject the caddie.
    According to Ingemar Nilsson.

    ___

    If you have a drive that does not function properly with RexxCD, please tell me. And please supply all values from the stem "DRIVE". You can use the Arexx script "rexx/debug.rexx", it saves all important parameters to a file.

    Development of RexxCD

    Written by
    Urban Lindeskog
    ProNotion SoftWare Development Group.

    Thanks for releasing the source codes:

    Thanks for the bug reports:

    Credits to the people that typed in lyrics:

    Send Comments, Bug-Reports and such to:

    Urban Lindeskog
    Folkungagatan 5 / 4 tr
    S-411 02 Gothenburg
    SWEDEN

    Email:     ubbe@rit.se
    Web: www.rit.se/~ubbe
    Telephone: +46-(0)31-151518

    ···Thank you for your kind attention···