Provided by: gom_0.30.2-6_amd64 
NAME
gom - a generic audio mixer (supports: OSS and derivatives)
SYNOPSIS
gom {OPTION}
VERSION
This manual page was distributed with gom 0.30.2 (31 May 2004).
DESCRIPTION
gom is a command line mixer manipulation program including a minimal, yet fully functional
internal ineractive text based interface.
Currently, there is also an internal X (xview) interface, but it's not well maintained and
will eventually be removed when a proper alternative is available.
At the moment, gom only supports the Open Sound System (OSS) and its derivatives
(OSS/Lite, OSS/Free (these two are obviously obsolete), the new Linux Sounddriver, ...).
gom tries to provide a complete and convenient interface for all kind of audio mixer
manipulation. gom's facilities include sound driver (compile time) and sound card (run
time) independence, arbitrary mixer selection, loading and saving of mixer settings,
volume fading, verbosity-level driven output, "Un*x-like scripting support", etc.
Apart from the exhaustive command line interface described here, gom has a built-in
interactive terminal interface (that I call gomii, gom interactive interface) using
ncurses. It supports adjustable (this includes disabling) real time updating. The gomii is
not explained in this manual page; please refer to the specific online help when using it.
However, the gomii's handling should be obvious, and actually it "tries to resemble" the
command line options.
There is also one more gomii for X using the xview toolkit. However, gom needs to be
especially compiled to include this, and it is intended to be replaced eventually by some
frontend for X using the gom binary.
And remember: gom is spelled g-o-m, but pronounced backwards for compatibility reasons.
Its real, actual and recursive title is gom, GOM is nOt yet another Mixer (for reasons
beyond the scope of this manual).
CONFIGURING GOM
There is no mandatory configuration for gom; it runs fine just as it is, without any
configuration. I.e., for senseful use without configuration, one always needs to (at
least) specify the mixer to use. For example:
gom --device=/dev/mixer2 --mute-all
However, you can configure gom a) for the system and b) for an individual user; each user
configuration is preferred in favor of the corresponding system configuration. In fact,
the routine for loading _any_ option file is to 1st try the user file, then the system
file, and else fail.
To configure, you should use the script gomconfig(8) (or most likely gomconfig --force )
that comes with the distribution -- using it as root will change the system configuration,
normal users will change their own configuration. You may well skip the rest of this
chapter if you do so.
All configuration files for gom are simply gatherings of command line options to gom
(where some files are restricted to certain options). Please see "--get-options" below.
The configuration files are (replace the "~/.gom" with "/etc/gom" for the system
configuration):
~/.gom/conf.default_mixer
Loaded on every startup of gom. Restricted to: "-d". Provides implicit opening of a
mixer device.
~/.gom/conf.initialize
Loaded with the option '-O, --originate, --initialize'. Unrestricted. Provides
creation of an initialization routine, even for multiple mixers.
~/.gom/conf.gom
Loaded on every startup of gom. Restricted to '-v, -q, -F, -U'. Provides implicit
creation of certain bevaviours. Discouraged.
~/.gom/<mixer-device>.<name>
These file are accessed simply by their <name> when <mixer-device> is opened. See
--get-options below.
TERMINOLOGY, PHILOSOPHY
A mixer is a set of channels (e.g. vol, line, cd). Each channel has a set of volume
channels (e.g. left, right), and optionally a recording source flag.
The evaluation which channels are available, and, for an available channel, which volume
channels and which flags are available on that specific channel, is being done at runtime;
this is sound card, and possibly sound driver dependent.
Thus, there are sound driver supported channels and specific sound card supported
channels. gom --info-all shows all sound driver supported channels, plus indicating their
specific availability.
Up to the time of this writing, the only sound driver supported is OSS (Open Sound System)
and its derivatives. This driver exists for a variety of platforms and in various flavours
(especially, the new Sounddriver of Linux is a derivative of OSS). (Remark: Gom's point
of view on how a "generic" mixer should look like may be strongly influenced by the OSS
API; however, the author feels that this view might not (yet) be absolutely generic). At
the time of this writing, OSS supports 17 channels, and a maximum of two volume channels
per channel (i.e., only "mono" or "stereo").
Of course, as gom depends on the sound driver installed on the system, its proper
installation (which is naturally not covered here) is mandatory for gom (as for any other
sound-using program).
OPTIONS
Options can be given in arbitrary order or amount; they are computed in sequence from left
to right. Default values (if any), are given in []. For boolean arguments, "1" means on,
"0" means off.
Note that for options with _optional_ arguments, these must be gi ven like "gom -G<file>"
(or "gom --get-settings=<file>" resp.) ra ther than "gom -G <file>" (or "gom --get-
settings <file>" resp.). Otherwise, they will be ignored (or, at least with my
implementat ion of getopt;).
Configuring options:
-d, --device, --mixer <argument>
[ **no mixer** ] Set mixer special device file to <argument>. If the new mixer is
valid, the current mixer --if any-- will be closed and the new mixer opened.
Current channel, current channel volume, the channel lock setting and the snapshot
will be resetted to defaults.
-c, --channel <argument>
[first available channel] Set current mixer channel to <argum ent>. The channel may
be given as number or as name.
-C, --volume-channel <argument>
[first available volume channel on current channel] Set volum e channel on current
mixer channel to <argument> (e.g., for s tereo, 0 means left, 1 means right
volume).
-k, --lock <argument>
-K, --lock-all <argument>
[1] Lock or unlock current or all channel(s). Locking means s yncing of the stereo
volumes (balance) for all volume setting s gom might do -- this doesn't change any
volume settings by itself (i.e., it doesn't auto-balance). Thus, a locked channe l
might have unbalanced volumes.
-F, --fade-interval <argument>
[5] Set fade interval to <argument> seconds. See --fade-to-lo udness.
-U, --refresh-interval <argument>
[30] Set gomii refresh (update) interval to <argument> second s (zero disables).
-W, --write-config, --save-config
This option is obsolete since version 0.29.10.
Setting mixer options:
-l, --loudness, --volume <argument>
Set current volume channel on current channel to <argument>. If the argument is
being given with a leading "+" or "-", the given value will be added or
substracted, respectively, from the current value. The allowed range is from zero
up to a sou ndcard driver dependent maximum.
-r, --record <argument>
Set recording for current channel on or off.
-R, --record-single
Set recording for current channel on and disable all other re cording sources.
-L, --fade-to-loudness, --fade-to-volume <argument>
Like --loudness, but fade to the new volume within a time giv en with --fade-
interval.
-m, --mute
-M, --mute-all
Mute current or all channels. Muting means setting all channe l volumes to 0.
Mixer settings options:
-G, --get-options, --load-options, --get-settings, --load-setting
Get options from/to file <argument>. If no argument is given, the default file
(named "default") is used. Non-absolut given filenames will be expanded to "<mixer-
device>.<argument>", and then first searched for in the user and -- if this fails
-- in the system configuration directory. Any free-form files with gom one-
character command line options in any lines starting with a dash (in column zero)
will make sense to this option.
-S, --save-settings [<argument>]
Save mixer settings to a free-form option file; for the file name, the same rules
as for loading option files apply, except that only the user configuration dir will
be used. Files with thusly expanded filenames will be silently overwritten; other
files never. When saving, care is being taken that the "last recording source
error" can't occur when loading these options (and maybe there are other reasonable
side effects apart from the pure mixer settings (e.g. channel locking, current
channel)). The bottom line to these load/save options is that you can easily save
new and load predefined mixer settings from anywhere.
-z, --snapshot-settings
-Z, --unsnapshot-settings, --restore-settings
[mixer settings after opening a new mixer] Snap- or unsnapsho t to/from current
mixer settings.
-O, --originate, --initialize
Load the options file "initialize"; all options are allowed in this file. This is
meant to initialize mixers. For example: "-d/dev/mixer0 -G -d/dev/mixer1 -G". This
would load the default settings file for both the mixer0 and the mixer1 device.
Informational options:
-t, --info
Display current channel information.
-T, --info-all
Display overall information.
-V, --version
Display version information.
-w, --copyright, --copyleft, --license, --warranty
Display copyright/license/warranty information.
-h, --help
-H, --help-verbose
Display this help normally or verbose; both helps are still d ependent on the
current verbosity level (i.e., higher verbosi ty levels might still show more; "gom
-v0 -H" and "gom -h" pr oduce the same output). For the normal verbosity level,
these are reasonable macros.
Special options:
-e, --execute <argument>
Execute the shell command <argument>.
Command line only options:
-Y, --ignore-config
Skip all automatically loaded configurations files; this must be given before any
other option (except q (quiet) or v (verbose)).
-i, --interface, --gomii <argument>
Explicitly start up a build-in gomii (<argument>=t: terminal gomii, <argument>=x: X
gomii).
-v, --verbose [<argument>]
[NORMAL] Set output verbosity to <argument> (number, the high er, the more
verbose). If no argument is given, the level will be increased by 1.
-q, --quiet, --silent
Set output verbosity to QUIET (only error / error help messag es).
-p, --pure, --print <argument>
Pure-print the current channels value given by <argument> to stdout
(<argument>=l|r, according to one character options). Useful for getting values
"into" scripts together with the -- quiet option.
-x, --extract-settings
Extract all mixer settings as a gom option line to stdout (e. g. for "setting=`gom
--quiet --extract-settings`" and "gom -- quiet $settings" later in a bash script).
-I, --read-stdin
Read options from stdin (until EOF).
ENVIRONMENT
HOME used as prefix for the configuration directory .gom/ for a non-root user.
FILES
/etc/gom/ system configuration directory (user root).
$HOME/.gom/ user configuration dir (all non-root users).
Files inside the configuration directory:
conf.default_mixer option file for default mixer (loaded on startup).
conf.gom option file (loaded on startup).
conf.initialize option file for initialization (loaded via --initialize).
<mixer-device>.default default options file for <mixer-device> (loaded with --get-
options).
<mixer-device>.<name> mixer settings that can be easily accessed just by <name>
with --get-options=<name> when <mixer-device> is open."
DIAGNOSTICS
Exit status is 0 if no errors were detected while running gom; it is greater than 0 if
one or more errors were detected. This should be interpreted as warning, not necessarily
as failure.
(The amount of detected errors will be printed out if the verbosity level is VERBOSE or
higher; the warning exit status is currently always 2, but this may change).
EXAMPLES
(This section is incomplete and most likely confusing ;).
1. gom as system startup
2. gom as user startup
3. gom in a running session
4. gom in scripts
5. Some more detailed examples
gom --interface=t, gom -it
Interactively manipulate mixer settings with the terminal gomii.
gom --get-settings, gom -G
(e.g. when you log in as user). Loads user's default options file.
gom --get-settings=cd, gom -Gcd
Loads options file "cd" (most likely a setting for playing cds).
gom -d/dev/mixer0 -M -d/dev/mixer1 -l100
First, mute mixer 0, then set the volume of the first channel on mixer 1 to 100.
gom -M -c vol -l 90 -c pcm -l 90 -e bplay super.voc -Z
Plays the sample super.voc on channel 4=pcm with all other channels muted,
restoring original mixer settings afterwards.
gom -ix -e <any_sound_player> -Z
Plays any sound, interactively setting the mixer before with the X gomii and
restoring settings afterwards.
AUTHOR
Copyright (c) 1996-2004 Stephan Alexander Sürken <absurd@olurdix.de> GPL.
The X gomii of the gom package is also Copyright (c) Hannu Savolainen 1993 (as it is
originally based on "xvmixer" by Hannu Savolainen).
The gom package is licensed under the GPL (GNU General Public License). The files
"README" and "COPYING" in the original distribution contain the exact terms.
SEE ALSO
gomconfig(8)
Information about OSS can currently (1999 August 18) be found at
"http://www.opensound.com/".
KNOWN BUGS
Gom does not detect recursion in option files (e.g. by adding a "-Gcd" to an options file
named "cd").
There must always be at least one recording source, so when writing option files for gom
"by hand", first put all to-be-active recording sources on, then all to-be-inactive
recording sources off, else one recording source might not become inactive in unfortunate
circumstances. Mixer settings automatically written by gom are saved in this manner.
The mixer settings files may be inconsistent between different sound drivers (i.e., if the
channel numbering is different).
Loading settings from a options file that was saved from a different mixer may lead to
errors (if some option is not available on the current mixer), or to silently not-setting
of newly available options of the current mixer; saving mixer settings with the mixer name
as prefix since 0.29.99 avoids this at least for not explicitly given mixer settings file
names.
The "text blocking output" cuts words (true, too, for the OPTIONS section of this manual
page).
X gomii bugs:
The X gomii has some "bugs" due to xview and/or the lack of documentation available for
the author (all the rest of this section):
The X gomii creates its display objects with xview, but doesn't check for allocation
errors. I guess xview somehow handles this ;).
The X gomii's scroll window displays in a non-fixed font.
Some placements in the X gomii are still static; it could imagine that the display might
look a little bit screwed up if you use a different configuration than mine (e.g. a
different font).
Xview, in general, "seems to be a little bit unstable" (the author itself locked all his
major input devices (i.e., mouse & keyboard (you should be so clever to have some other
means to access your computer when programming xview ;)) several times by using xview
applications under X (not necessarily the X gomii) for whatever unknown reasons (and
without being able to reproduce the bug properly). (()())
KNOWINGLY NO BUGS
If starting gom results in loading and initializing the kernel sound driver (e.g. if the
sound driver gets kerneld-autoloaded under Linux), the sound card's settings are set to
the driver's default by the driver itself. gom has nothing to do with these defaults and
doesn't change any settings -- any program using the sound driver in that situation would
have the same effect.