[ On Saturday, December 14, 2002 at 11:06:15 (+0100), Bernd Sieker wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: spkr beep
>
> On 14.12.02, 20:57:33, Paul wrote:
> > 
> > Quick question,
> > how to make the speaker beep on ss5?
> > I just want to throw it in a script.
> 
> In a word: Don't.
> 
> I really hate scripts/programs that beep. Especially if other people are
> in the room, too.

Personally I don't mind the odd beep or other noise, though identical
beeps get a little boring and meaningless after a while.  But more about
that later....

Your opinion reminds me of a rather over-stuffed professor I once had.
He is a fairly famous guy in some computer science circles so I won't
mention his name.

I had put a BEL in my prompt when I was using a really slow and
over-loaded PDP 11/60 so that I could stop chatting with my neighbour in
the terminal room and go back to work when a compile finished.  This
professor happened to walk through the terminal room one day when I was
busy typing a whole stream of short-running commands.  He demanded that
I take the BEL out of my prompt or else he'd have my system access
revoked.  Informally and to my friends I called him Dr. Control-G for
the rest of the semester.  I think he got the point.  ;-)

These days I use more interesting and meaningful sounds to remind me of
things that need to be done.  For example in my /etc/mk.conf I have the
following so that I know when a "make package" needs attention:

# make some noise when we need a password!
#
PRE_ROOT_CMD=   rsh proven auplay -audio $$AUDIOSERVER ~woods/lib/sounds/${HOSTNAME}-needs-passwd

For a sparc-5 local host just a plain "audioplay" should work fine
instead of using NAS and "auplay".

Currently my build machine plays this file:

	http://www.weird.com/~woods/starting-out-needs-passwd.au	

:-)

-- 
								Greg A. Woods

+1 416 218-0098;            <g.a.woods@ieee.org>;           <woods@robohack.ca>
Planix, Inc. <woods@planix.com>; VE3TCP; Secrets of the Weird <woods@weird.com>